After a decent day at work yesterday, I had a serendipitous time with a friend of mine from the dance club and church. Last week, I went to Thearith and Daing’s house for a spring roll dinner, and my friend Gwen came over as well. Well, she had brought a chicken salad, which she gave the rest of to me that evening to have at home for leftovers. Well, I needed to get her dish back to her, and so I brought it in to work, and dropped by her place in the Nob Hill area after work to hand it off. Well, to my fortune, she had just whipped up some stir fry and invited me in for a bit.

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Gwen is originally from Taiwan. Her father, a handsome, accomplished and popular young pilot in Chiang Kai-shek’s air force, died in an accident when she was a child. Unable- or unavailable- to raise her children herself, Gwen’s mother put her and her siblings in a Buddhist orphanage, where she stayed for quite sometime. Very independent and strong-willed and graced with a streak of defiance, Gwen somehow survived a Spartan childhood that was laced with abuses and neglect, and a culture that displayed a subtle denigration of women. Gwen excelled in sports and bullying, and she made a habit of running away from the orphanage periodically to steal food or other necessities. Gwen managed to find her way out of the orphanage, and as a late teen, out of Taiwan, traveling to America to be reunited with her mother who was living in New York. However, it turned out her mother really didn’t want her or her brother stepping into her life once they arrived at her doorsteps. In a short time Gwen and her brother were out of her mother’s place. Soon, Gwen was in New Mexico, trying to get as far away from family as she could, with the aim of attending college, and trying to find a life. She had, after all, taught herself enough English to get to America. She was a survivor. She knew how to take care of herself. She had for all of her life.

Gwen ended up marrying young in New Mexico, in part looking for an anchor in a man who was American since she was still trying to stay above water in this new Western cultural world. The marriage didn’t take, though, and it ended after a few years.

In time, Gwen ended up dating and marrying another man, a man who wanted to build a life with her. She helped him through school, with the understanding that he would help her to attend school later. Well, a daughter came along, business become all-consuming for her spouse, and she was relegated to the house mom role, which felt so foreign to her. Her educational ambitions were ignored. Love disappeared in the marriage, but she and her husband stayed together for their daughter’s sake, until things became too much, and their daughter was setting out on her own.

Well, the marriage ended, and Gwen did what anyone would do after a divorce. She picked up and went back to school. Medical school at UNM. She became a doctor.

I met Gwen in the ADC Dance Club, and we’ve become friends over the last months. Raised Buddhist, she and I have opened a dialogue about faith and relationships, and she has started coming to Sagebrush Highland and attending our small group. And it has been informative to learn about her life- where she’s come from, and the influences that have shaped her.

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Well, after dinner, my brief stop turned into a fruit picking expedition. In front of a natural healing center down near Central, Gwen said there was jujube tree that the center let her pick the fruits from. She asked me if I’d go help her pick jujubes, and not knowing what a jujube was, I said sure. And then she grabbed three bags to put them in.

Ripening jujubes, or Chinese dates, dangle in clusters in a jujube tree.

A jujube is evidently a date like fruit that first grew in Mongolia. Gwen said she used to find jujube trees and pick them all the time when she’d sneak away from the orphanage. Chinese eat a lot of them. I tried one, and it tasted like a dry apple- slightly sweet and solid inside, with a smooth outer skin. Jujubes don’t need a lot of moisture or care to grow, evidently, and Gwen surmises they could be a great answer to starvation problems around the world- they are full of healthy vitamins.

Well, we got to the tree and picked jujubes for 40 minutes or so as the sun set. I enjoyed learning more about her and her childhood and the fruits as we talked and picked the ripe kiwi or tear-shaped fruits from the tree. We filled three bags pretty well. She was excited to have the harvest. She looked forward to sharing them with family and friends. Her mom, in time, followed her to New Mexico. Her daughter remains here as well.

The jujube harvest.

Gwen lives a very natural lifestyle, and she has a lovely backyard of flowers and herbs and other plants.

We split a cantaloupe as a reward for the harvest once we returned to her home, and it was ripe and juicy and slaked our present thirst pretty well. And then I left to run some errands.

It was a pleasant unplanned time with a friend.

My highlight of the evening? Besides the company, it was picking and eating concord grapes off of a vine growing on a fence in her yard. The grapes were sugary sweet and popped open with a splash of juice when bitten. My first foray with fresh concord grapes helps me understand why they make fine wines and jellies.