I have been thinking about an orange all day.  I ate it two years ago in February at a rest stop off of Interstate 5.  Don’t ask me which rest stop; which stretch of highway. I couldn’t tell you anything  more than it was before Ojai, Ca and far enough away from Martinez, Ca, that I was hungry, that as much as I wanted to be at my destination, I had to pull over.  I sat on the hood of my car, and fished out the lunch my mother had packed for me in a small brown paper bag: a sandwich wrapped in wax paper and an orange with its peel sliced in quarters, the cuts not deep enough to disrupt the fruit.  She had “started” it for me. I had forgotten how I could never figure out how to peel an orange when I was a child, and so to alleviate my frustration and cut down on the mess I inevitably made, her solution was to  draw a knife down its sides, sectioning its skin and then handing it to me so I could finish the job.  I don’t know how long I sat staring at the orange and crying.  Time stopped.