The painting
The logo for Orange Blossom Mindfulness is a painting my great-grandfather created. He painted his wife (my great-grandmother; we called her “Mere.”) harvesting oranges in an orange grove. Family lore has it that he was legally blind at some point, and kept painting. I think he probably did this one while his vision was still good.
During my childhood, the painting hung in my grandmother’s house in Waveland, Mississippi. (We called her “Honey.”) When we took long summer weekends at Honey’s house & spent lazy, sandy days at the beach, Mere was always on the wall watching over us when we came home to hose off & eat sandwiches with Honey. As a child, I thought the painting was so romantic. I never knew Mere, but I was so proud of how beautiful she was in the painting, and that my great-grandfather was a pretty good artist. I never knew of a family orange grove, or why he painted her there. As an adult, I asked my dad and he explained that for a time, my grandmother’s family lived in South Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, which was famed for its citrus farms that yielded satsumas & navel oranges like jewels.
Decades passed; Honey passed. We distributed her things. I got married. I married the love of my life, who is from South Plaquemines Parish. My in-laws had a small orange grove of their own: maybe 7 or 8 trees. Driving to South Plaquemines to visit his parents in the 1990s & early 2000s, we passed citrus farm after citrus farm. Harvest happened from November through December, so in the winter, my father-in-law distributed overflowing bags of homegrown oranges & lemons as Christmas gifts. We savored them; better than anything from a grocery store. So intensely sweet & flavorful. I discovered Meyer lemons there and they became my absolute favorite: plump lemons with the sweetness of an orange. When we bought our first house, we planted two citrus trees of our own, and they grew so big we could barely handle the harvest every year. In my mind, I linked December holidays with delicious citrus fruit. Over the years we attended many Orange Festivals in Buras, near my husband’s hometown.
So when I needed to condense my vision into a few words to name my business, orange blossoms came to mind. Citrus trees bloom in the spring, and the scent can be overpowering. Sometimes you can smell a citrus bloom from a block away. Those beautiful flowers are the promise of overwhelmingly decadent fruit in the winter, when everything else looks dead. The flower represents the anticipation of nourishment, pleasure, and joy.
When you decide to turn towards your trauma and address it, that’s an orange blossom. Your resolve to face your hurts creates an aroma of promise, anticipated joy. It will take a while; we have to wait between the flower & the fruit. You can’t rush it.
But how delightful and nourishing the fruit will be! Better because you grew it yourself.
