The Centers of Pineapples

How the values are passed, from one generation to the next, growing up, in the harder times before, translated…

My elderly father who’d retired came to Taiwan with the KMT retreat, following, it was the deprivations of materialism of the baby boomer generations, after he’d considered about the household economics, before he had the opportunities to attend his own middle school graduation, he’d reported to class in a military academy, and began his almost a decade long career as an army man.

My elderly father told me, that the trainings in the military sure was very hard, but that was also, the very first time he’d ever had a huge glass of heated up soymilk, and the very first time he’d ever eaten the huge bowls of rice, without the yams mixed in. My father often reminisced, that when he was younger, they’d not had any extra money for the fruits, and had to go with her siblings to the vegetable stands, picking up the centers of pineapples that the vendors disposed of; and if they were lucky, they would get the chance, of having some of the flesh of the pineapples that the fruit stand owner accidentally shaved off.

the centers are usually hard, that, is why those fruit vendors would throw them out, but it tastes pretty good, just like the rest of the pineapple, unless you don’t have ANY teeth!!!  Photo from online…

All of this, may be a representation of a difficult era, but, it’d also carried my father’s generation’s values of cherishing everything that they had, which is very difficult, for the current generation that’s focused completely on cleanliness and sanitations couldn’t have ever imagined.

The technological advances in agricultural, had made the centers of pineapples tasted a little less sour and stale, but as I’d cut up the pineapples for my children, I’d always carried my father’s words to heart, “Don’t shave off the center.” “Cut it to smaller pieces, if you think you may have difficulties swallowing them.” or maybe, he still couldn’t quite let go of his former self, in his poverty stricken years before, but I’d believed more, that he’d wanted every generation of us to not become wasteful, to cherish everything we’re given.

and, we just, scrape the pieces off the bottom, and eat it all up here, not my photograph still…

So, this, is the values that the father passed to his young, and, by watching his father saving up on things, the narrator also picked up the good behaviors, of not wasting anything that can still be used, because the older generations had it hard, and sometimes, even as they aged, and become better economically, they still can’t quite shake off the images of themselves, living in poverty-stricken conditions, that, is why the older generations always save everything.