While dismantling a ripe pomegranate, I think about Demeter and Persephone. The mother loved her daughter so passionately that she could not bear the thought of Persephone going off with a man to have her own life. Could not bear to be without her, and fell into grief.
Neither could the daughter bear to leave her mother. With Hades, she resisted eating except for those few seeds of pomegranate. She knew eating in the underworld would stop her from returning to her mother.
Mother and daughter, daughter and mother. Profound relationships – even such that they affect the weather, the crops, the life of the entire community. When the mother and daughter are reunited, everything is sunshine and flowers and fruit again.
Persephone ate five seeds…only five. It was enough. After that she began to divide her time between her old life in the upper world and her new one below.
I think about my own daughter. She was home for Christmas, and now she has gone back to the adult life she has created for herself.
If she were still living at home, she would soon be digging into a bowl of red jeweled seeds of pomegranate. But she is in another city now. She has her own life there.
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