The Forbidden Fruit

“Let me tell the story, grandma.” said grandfather, passionately. “Where was I? Ah, yes – your grandmother on your mum’s side was very, very busy; your other grandfather only had one leg, so he couldn’t look after you very well. Your young cousins had to help out by looking after you. They were children themselves, you see. They were no bigger than you are now. That made it difficult for them to know what was best for you.

One day, they could not stop you crying, because you were very hungry. They gave you what they liked most – cherries – and you swallowed most of them whole. But you were too small. You were only a baby, and the cherries weren’t ripe, or washed. So, you became ill, very quickly.

The problem was that we didn’t know.

You were so poorly that your other grandmother was unsure of what to do and she was too afraid to tell us. The doctor in that village didn’t have the right medicines to give you.”

“So what happened, grandfather?” I asked.

“Well, at night, an Angel came to me and whispered in my ear that you were in great danger. That you were extremely unwell and that I had to bring you back.” Grandfather paused for a few, long seconds, to assess my reaction.

“The next day, I rang your other grandmother. I asked about you being sick but – stubbornly – she didn’t tell me anything. I could not sleep that night, so the next day, I called again and – this time – she said:
‘I don’t have money to bring her to you, so you’d better get on the train and take her away. She’s been very ill, passing blood in her nappies every day.’
So, that afternoon, I got on the train to Ocna Mures. We were so worried.”

“When I arrived, and took you in my arms, you were so weak. You just let out a big sigh and put your head on my shoulder. You also had a bruised, scarred nose and upper lip. It seemed that your pram had fallen down a flight of stairs, with you inside it.”

I realised that my grandfather’s eyes were full of tears, as he told me the story. I wished he hadn’t told me anything. I didn’t want to see him cry. Trying to comprehend, I watched him. Grandma was also wiping her eyes. 

“When grandfather brought you home, I called our doctor”, she said. “He came late at night. He checked you, took a blood sample and then gave us a box of powders from his medicine chest. He explained to us:
‘If you manage to give her this whole box of powders with water by morning, she’ll most likely live. She seems to have dysentery, I will confirm tomorrow.’
We did as he told us. We sang to you, through the night, and fed you those powders, with lots of boiled water. You were so well behaved. You didn’t cry at all. You were so sleepy that we had to keep waking you up. In the morning, when the medicine was all gone, we let you sleep uninterrupted for a while. Slowly but surely, you got better. You stopped bleeding. The next day, the doctor came again to see you and he was very relieved that you lived. It took us a while to get you back to full strength.”

“Yes, and soon after that, for the first time, you began to speak.”

“So many words, and pronounced correctly.”

The story, often re-told through my childhood and youth, was a story of strength, and of love. It still keeps its dark implications, as well as its stunningly heart-warming ones. 

Grandfather picked me up, and smiling, gave me a big hug.

“So, my Sweetest, you should be careful about eating too many cherries.” he said, looking at me intently.

“No more cherries today for you, young lady!!” he concluded, while my expressions of delight at being held up in the air filled the room with noise.

He always had a way of sweetening the bitterest medicine.

To this day, cherries are my favourite fruit. The forbidden ones, that always make me ill, yet I can never stop myself from having them.


Source: http://chroniclesoflightanddarkness.blogspot.com/2011/06/story-of-forbidden-fruit.html