The centerpiece of my childhood kitchen table was a bowl of wax fruit. The centerpieces of most of my childhood friends’ kitchen tables were bowls of wax fruit. In a few cases, these bowls of fruit were brought back from a family member’s trip to Mexico, and were made of onyx or paper-maché or, very occasionally, blown glass, but the consistent theme here was that it was fruit and that it was artificial. I especially liked the grapes, which were not wax, but rather, rubbery spheres that made little exhaling sounds when squeezed, and then popped back into shape.