Christmas Oranges

As the saying goes, we all sooner or later turn into out mothers and fathers. The way we laugh, what we feel compelled to laugh at, our love of music or sports, our dislike of rutabagas or our love of water. It is all mostly genetic. Once we get to that certain age, the age where we tend to notice things like this, we will often catch ourselves saying something or responding to something exactly as our mother or father would have. Often when we are young, we are aghast when something like that happens and vow to never let it happen again. But being the creatures of habit that we are, we will find ourselves being like our parents more often than we are not. There have been many times, that I stopped mid sentence almost, to swear the words that just came out of my mouth could have come from my mother's. That is also true when I'm cooking or shopping, cleaning or crying. My mother and I both have the misfortune of our nose turning red and our eyes almost disappearing in our faces when the tears start to flow.
I should not have been surprised then, when my daughter, who has never shown any particular enthusiasm or interest in being crafty, posted a picture of some Christmas decorations she crafted for her new apartment. The picture was not that of a store bought Santa, a preassembled Christmas tree or anything else that would have been convenient for a young girl, short on cash, and busy making her way in the big city. It was a picture of a pair of clementines studded with whole cloves the way I used to embellish them when she was young. I do not claim that embellishing clementines is a genetic trait, but it says a lot about how we feel about home and the things that we find comfort in when we need to make a home of our own.
Just out of curiosity, I will have to ask my own mother whether my grandmother studded oranges when she was young. I have a feeling I know what she'll say. Maybe that is the reason I always associated the smell of citrus with Christmas and still do to this very day.