LOVE FOR SEVEN ORANGES

Wow. I just ate my first Pixie Mandarin. My first seven, rather. I couldn't stop; they were so magnificent. Tiny, bright, beautiful oranges that taste like sunshine with sugar on top.

I am a sucker for all the exotic fruits at The Merc. I buy stuff based on cute names — like Pixie — or exotic appearance. Anything shiny and bright will tempt me, even if my better judgment tells me it's out of season, that it's going to be all flash and no substance. Like the bing cherries in the middle of winter. How many times have those tricked me? I pay $6 or more a pound and get them home and they taste like nothing. Worse than nothing — because you NEED them to be SOMETHING so badly! Or the expensive, romantic sounding blood oranges whose flavor, alas, lacks all romance. Or the sour figs. Or the tiny red bananas that tasted like cardboard (to be fair, I think I ate those too soon. I knew nothing about them. Only that they were tiny and red and reminded me of that island Captain Cook visited that had bananas with red flesh that made the natives' mouths look like they were bleeding, which scared the bejesus out of European sailors nourished on tales of South Sea cannibalism.)

Recently, after I had been burned again by the cherries, I stole one and tasted it. I figured it was due me if I was going to blow $10 on them. It was glorious. But the other 250 of them I got stuck with were like contemporary fiction: all texture and no sweetness.

But Pixie Mandarins. My God. They're like those midget oranges your mom puts in fruit salads and Jell-O. Only they're FRESH and BURSTING with splendor. It's the kind of deal where you say to yourself: I can't believe something this good is in my mouth. I really can't believe it.

We've all had that kind of deal.

Some other fruit moments:

Eating kumquats, my first, with the Last Feminista and his artist friend Nick in Nick's blackened, illegal apartment (some zoning deal), which is where the coffee shop Henry's is now. (LF, what happened to that huge painting he gave you, by the way? It had all sorts of objects — nails, glass, Christmas lights — sticking out of it. It had some deep meaning.)

Eating pomegranates, my first, with my old roommate Linda and her boyfriend Richard. I really hated that guy. He was ridiculous and petty and didn't appreciate Linda, but he knew how to pick a good pomegranate.

Eating exotic Asian fruits with Steve at Lanna Thai in Tulsa — after the divorce. I still don't know what they were. Or why I remember them.

As a kid, breaking open my first real coconut with my sister. We pooled our quarters to buy it and used a sledgehammer and sat on the sidewalk and drank the weird milk and picked out the startling white flesh and pretended we were guest stars on "Gilligan's Island." "After we're done eating we can make a bikini top out of these shells, or a radio."

Presenting the biggest, yellowest banana I've ever seen to Erin, a banana lover, in random appreciation of her friendship. And hearing her say, happily, as she peeled it, "This makes me feel dirty."

Eating a bowl of bing cherries, my first, with my first cousin Kevin at my aunt and uncle's cabin in the Rockies. We ate the cherries — I was stunned by their flavor; I had only eaten maraschino cherries before or canned pie cherries — and we competed to see how far we could spit the pits. And we waded in the mountain stream until our feet turned blue — June is too soon!— and listened to John Denver and gave each other adolescent kisses with cherry-stained mouths.

Eating strawberries in France with Kim, my first.

Eating kiwi fruit, my first, with Steve and Steve Kozak and his wife, Cindy. We had some huge grilled meat fest and consumed tons of beer and cigarettes. Kozak drank vodka out of plastic pint bottles. Then he peeled about 20 kiwi fruit and cut them up for dessert. It was a revelation.

Picking apples with Beth in autumn, in New York, her favorite time and place.

Buying peaches in the Ozarks and watching my 8-year-old niece devour the whole bag, with an ear-to-ear smile and juice running down both arms.

Watching my grandma peel apples to make pie. She made the whole peel come off in one long, skinny strip, cigarette dangling from her lips. I would monitor the progress of the giant strip. If it broke, we'd both act real sad. And she'd try again. I'd remind her to ash her cigarette.

Feeding watermelon — her favorite — to my dog Regina the summer she died.

Making banana ice cream with my mom as a kid, having to turn that damn crank.

Drinking icy cold strawberry shakes with Brenda Kendall at the lake and having to share mine when a huge horsefly landed in hers and she started to cry.

The ever-present Cezanne-like bowl of pears in Erin and Ben's kitchen.

Peach pie in bed on a winter night.

Fruit.