Ordinary Time and a Liturgy of Peaches

Jess Pettit-Tarquinio shares a life lesson learned from her grandmother's longtime summer routine.

Summertime reminds me of fresh peaches and slow, long days of sunshine.

As a child, I spent my summers at my grandparents’ lake home on the outskirts of the Adirondacks. My memories of those days are the ones you can feel: the easy breeze on my skin; the taste of sandwiches on the front deck; the thick herbal smell of walks beneath tall, shady tree canopies; the lazy drift of sailboats gliding along the gentle waves, and of course, the gentle fuzz of peaches in my hand and on my tongue.

My Grandmother's Summer Ritual

My grandmother always used to keep a bowl of fresh fruit on the kitchen table, usually filled with nectarines and peaches. As a child, I loved their soft, velvety texture, their sweet aroma, and of course, the juice that seeped down my chin after that first great big bite. Long after I had grown up and brought my own children there, my grandmother still kept to the same schedule. We knew to arrive at the ordinary time: just before lunch and not a moment earlier. Nothing flustered her more than people showing up before she was ready — except, perhaps, people showing up late.

But it was always worth it. Lunch was usually ham and cheese sandwiches with potato chips on the side (my grandmother always put hers in the sandwich for an extra crunch), and then we were free to run down the grassy green hill to the lake and go for a swim, or to take a walk around the forested neighborhood. And during that time between lunch and dinner, iced tea and peaches were always available.

While we kept busy with relaxation, my grandmother always did one of three things: she’d sit on the deck under the umbrella and read her latest book, lie down on the couch for an afternoon nap, or come down the lake front to chat with us (but never to swim, of course; those days were long behind her, she’d always said). That was my favorite thing about her. She had her own ritual, a calm steadiness that almost made you believe that, like the iced tea and peaches on the counter, the summer days like that would last forever.

The Beauty of Ordinary Time

My grandmother’s ritual taught me about an important part of the ritual of the liturgical year. While we wait for our eternal summer, we experience a time for waiting (Advent), a time for rejoicing (Christmas), a time for fasting (Lent), and a time for feasting (Easter). In between all of that is Ordinary Time, a time like the summers of my youth. Ordinary Time doesn’t demand anything from us. It doesn’t force waiting, rejoicing, fasting, or feasting. It’s fresh fruit on the kitchen table: there for us to take at our own pace.

In Ordinary Time, while the world turns vibrant and verdant outside, the priests don vestments as evergreen as the forest around my grandmother’s lake home. There is something so alive and refreshing about the predictable ebbing and flowing of the liturgical year, but Ordinary Time is the steady, relaxing beach beside it, where we can sit and chat without having to swim. And there, we can experience precious, seemingly insignificant moments together that teach our souls the most important lesson of all: holiness can come from the ordinary, experienced in joy-filled days where memories feel like magic and taste like peaches.

My grandmother didn’t die during Ordinary Time, but during the short, dark days of Lent. A few days before she made her journey to her lake home in heaven, a nurse brought her some mashed peaches to eat. I fed her only three spoonfuls before she became too tired to eat any more.

"Remember those fresh peaches you'd put out in the summer?” I asked her between bites. “I bet this is nothing like that.”

"It's good still," she mused before closing her eyes.

Between waiting, rejoicing, fasting, and feasting, God, in His goodness, gave us the ordinary. And He gave us peaches.

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Copyright 2026 Jess Pettit-Tarquinio
Images: Canva