Grapefruits are amazing. They have this epic size, the "king" of citrus fruits, if you will. Thick skin that's smooth and soft and the most amazing fleshy interior...ruby red or champagne white (take your pick, california or florida), they're pulpy and massive, and tart, and sweet all in one. Interesting that the fruit impresses me in this way, since I absolutely detest grapefruit juice, but that's another story altogether.
So why grapefruit? In Spanish they have a saying: one's "better half" is their "media naranja," literally your "half orange"...Of course, that oranges, not grapefruits, but it's stuck with me ever since i first heard the phrase. Separately, though completely related in my mind, my mother and father have shared exactly one grapefruit every single morning of their married life. My mom cuts it in half and then cuts along the individual pieces and the enter circumference so that you can eat it right out of the skin, like a bowl. she has done this every day for as long as i can remember...she used to make me and my brother share one for breakfast before going to school, which i used to hate...it seem too complicated to eat, and i hated the effort. and i remember my dad sitting at the breakfast table scrapping the inside of the "grapefuit bowl" to get the last remnants of the skin...leave nothing wasted (depression era kids)...and it seemed so disgusting at the time....why not just eat the fruit and leave the rest? and mom would do the same. and they still do it, almost 70 years old. honestly, i don't think they have a better expression of their love than this daily morning ritual. and a ritual it most definitely is. eating the grapefruit, i realized this past xmas when i was visiting, is almost like a ceremony (i know that may sound cheesy, but it's so true in their case...)...i don't think they have a better expression of their harmony and i don't think they need one--you take my half, i take yours, there are not equal (one half inevitably gets more pits, or more skin, or more juice), but each part comes from the same fruit...
that's it.