Nonfiction by Michele Tjin
The delicate popcorn balls of flowers have appeared again, the herald of a new season. The arrival seems earlier each year.
The plum tree was already a mature specimen when we moved into this house. That first July, one of the first things we did was to pick up the rotting fruit off the ground. I whispered to the tree and my pregnant belly that in a year or two, there would be small hands to help harvest the fruit.
How does this tree of the family Prunus salicina know when to emerge from winter and make slivers of leaves and dainty blooms?
How do I know when to kick off this curtain of chaos and confront hard issues, difficile confligit?
Other signs of life and hope in my backyard: tiny sparrows and hummingbirds dancing around the flowers of the plum tree; songbirds trilling. The harshness of winter is behind us.
Despite not watering and pruning this tree, not giving it any real love or attention, it continues to be dependable and prolific.
I look forward to the perfume of plums ripening in my kitchen. Nothing is as wonderful as biting into the amber flesh and allowing the clear juice to run down my chin.
After a few weeks of non-stop eating, I’m satiated. Yet others tell me they can’t get enough of this fruit.
Don’t you forget about me this year, a friend says.
If you want to come over and climb a ladder, help yourself, I answer.
If I climb a ladder to bridge the chasms, will it be worth it, or will I fall?
In the summer, this tree is weighed down so much by its fruit that it needs to be propped up with a stick, a visible reminder of how much goodness this tree gives.
I imagine the tree’s complex network of roots searching deep underground to find a source of life-giving water to nourish itself.
How do I nourish my spirit when it’s dry and withered?
Things this plum tree has witnessed: birthday cakes and birthday parties. A kiddie pool that lasted just an afternoon one summer. A bounce house that winter. Another bounce house the following winter. That time we dyed socks. My efforts at being a backyard gardener. Dinners outside. Ants. The neighbor’s cat. That stray rabbit. People who once came over frequently but no longer visit because of quarantine, new seasons of life, or small conflicts that festered and coalesced into something bigger, something that doesn’t have a name or shape anymore.
Or maybe it’s just a lost connection. I’m not sure anymore.
These blossoms are fleeting: in just a few weeks, they will be torn apart by the wind. Their fragile nature and impermanence have always struck me, like they’re a metaphor for something.
My hands and a pair of smaller ones will collect the plums in four months when the green small marbles deepen into crimson globes, and we’ll give much of our harvest away.
After the summer, after a period of cold and reset, this tree will bloom once more the following spring and offer me hope again. Where will I be in a year?
Michele Tjin is an emerging writer who writes others’ stories by day and her own by night. When she is not writing, she aspires to be a better backyard gardener.
