Wintery-Spring

My Poppa playing for my daughter long ago

I should be doing laundry and packing for tomorrow’s early flight to Michigan. At least I should be planning what to launder and pack. 

My Michigan family says that spring has sprung. I hear it in their voices. 

So I picture spring as I remember it: tender baby leaves, spongy fragrant earth, soft fuzzy buds, daffodils, forsythia, lilac, the sweet smell of newness and hope...) Sneakers, light jackets and T-shirts.

But a check of the forecast says that my Michigan family is delirious. Their beastly winter has left them untrustworthy in their relief, unreliable. 

Or, it might be my recollection of spring that’s faulty. Maybe spring has always had frozen strands of winter woven through it. Maybe those last wintery bits are essential for making the springy parts even sweeter. So, sweaters still? Scarves and gloves?

But I’m not packing yet: I’m bracing. 

A trip home is no longer an easy thing. My father will still be dead when I get there. In fact, he’ll be considerably more dead there than he is here, especially when he won’t wrestle up from his chair to greet me at the door.

And my mom will not have recovered from the cruel process of aging. She used to say it was like a sinking ship, one thing after another goes overboard. Short term memory, names, hearing... 

She doesn’t say that anymore. 

But the things I need to brace for are the things I can’t brace for, the things I don’t see coming, until they’ve mowed me flat. Like a couple weeks ago when I blithely attended a classical music concert.

You’d think I would have suspected that my first time hearing an orchestra tune up on a darkened stage would be tough. After a life-time of my dad's concerts, it seems stunningly stupid of me not to have anticipated the pain.

But there it is. The things we see coming, and the things we don’t. How do you pack for such a trip?

xo amy

Plum Tree Blues

Once upon five or seven years ago, I planted a plum tree too close to the street which was a bugle-call to passing neighbors: 

FREE PLUMS! 

Why stop at two or three? 

All you can carry! 

Bring the car!

And to squirrels and birds: 

FREE PLUMS! 

Please Scatter slimy purple plum bits everywhere! 

No need to eat the whole plum!

One bite is best! 

So this year I went out early to outfox my nemesises -- canvas bag in hand, to pick as many as I could reach. Never mind that they were still hard greenish rocks, the point was THEY WERE MINE!

But it was difficult to pluck the plum babies off the branch when they were so young and helpless. They didn't let go easily. I could practically hear them cry, NO! NOT YET!!!!

So I only took a few. Put them on the windowsill. Squeezed them daily like the witch in Hansel & Gretel. 

Meanwhile, the plums on the tree put on their dusty gray disguise so I wouldn't recognize them. But I was way smarter than any plum so I tested and retested, carting samples off to the windowsill where they joined the others, ripening strangely.  

I just wanted to pick and eat one plum, ok eleven plums, soft, sweet, juicy, perfectly ripe, warm from the sun.  Was that too much to ask in exchange for all the fertilizer and water????

Plums FELL!

Hey! I would have eaten those! I told the tree. But she dropped even more before their time. 

Was she telling her babies, Enough is enough, get the hell outta here and get your own life? Or was she saying, Be free little seeds! Be fruitful and multiply!?

Either way, she was crazy to plant them there! Did she really want another plum tree just like herself to take hold and grow so close at her side? Did she want to spend her life battling her own offspring for water and light?

That's the stuff of Greek tragedy! 

It didn't make sense. So I decided I'd be helping all concerned by picking the rest of her plums, gobbling them up and carrying away the pits. 

Apparently I was not alone in that thought. You saw this coming, of course, and I should have too. But this am I crept up on my plum tree, canvas bag at the ready... and I was too late. Not a one left on the tree. 

xo

Amy