Persimmons

Photo by Vlada Teper

This fruit tastes like my childhood in Kishinev, Moldova. I remember being eight or younger, standing on Iskra Street with my grandmother, and trying to rescue an exploded persimmon. We laughed as the juice made our hands sticky and I gulped down the fruit before it became a puddle on the sidewalk.

Recently, my parents collected their biggest persimmon harvest yet, from the tree they planted in Charleston (a portion of their harvest appears in the photo.) Their two-year-old granddaughter, who immediately fell in love with the word “hur’ma,” helped them pick the fruit.