The Cherry Tree

As my kids were getting ready for bed the other night, I played guitar while waiting to tuck them in. My youngest, Emerson, snuck in when she heard me playing.

“What are you playing?” She asked.

“Nothing in particular.” I told her.

“Have you ever written a song?” She asked.

I nodded. “A few, actually.”

“Can you play one?”

“Sure.” I told her.

She sat on the bed next to me. From my nightstand, I pulled out an aged notebook with a faded green cover and yellowed college rule pages, a relic of my twenties. Inside the notebook are handwritten poems and song lyrics. I found lyrics for a song, set the notebook on the bed, and played it for her.

When the song was done, she smiled and picked up the notebook.

“I liked it.” She said and flipped through the pages. “Are these all songs?”

“Some are poems.” I told her.

“Do you ever write quotes? Like things you come up with?”

“Sometimes.”

“I write quotes.” She said.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Will you read me one?”

She smiled and disappeared into her bedroom. When she returned, she had a Moomin notebook, a present from Finland I brought home for her the year prior. She sat down and read me a few of her quotes. For a ten-year-old, they are surprisingly deep, philosophical even.

“Will you read me one of your poems?” She asked.  

“Okay.” I handed her the notebook. “Why don’t you pick one and I will read it.”

She found one at the front of the notebook, a prose poem I wrote in the spring of 2009, just before my son, Aiden, was born. I read it to her.

When it was finished, I looked up to see her wide amber eyes. “That’s a good one.” She said. Then she smiled. “Will you tuck me in?”

“Okay.” I tell her.

So here it is, from the old notebook, with Emerson’s seal of approval. I hope you enjoy it as much as she did.

The Cherry Tree

Once, when I was a young boy, there stood outside my bedroom window an old cherry tree. It had a thick trunk, and I used to wonder about how many fingerprint-like ring-lines I might find in it if I had the curiosity and axe of George Washington.

The bark was different from other trees, dark brown tinged in red, like the color of dried blood. It grew strangely, curling away from the trunk in places, and occasionally, I peeled pieces away like old scabs.

In the morning, when the great golden orb rose on the eastern horizon, light danced through my bedroom windows. I would lay in bed, looking out at the branches of the old cherry tree. Each season brought something different.

In winter, the branches were mystical, as the bareness revealed how strangely they twisted from the trunk. Snow collected in the joints of the branches. The white abyss of winter seemed to void the cherry tree during the cold, dark months, and I anxiously awaited warmer days ahead.

When spring arrived, the snow on the old cherry tree melted and the ground thawed. Thick, cold rain soaked the waking world, and soon after, the old cherry tree blossomed white. Shafts of dawn light shined over the white clusters, and it was as if tiny clouds had set in, covering the once naked branches. Then the little, white flower petals fell, covering the newly green, supple lawn. The blossoms were fleeting, stayed only for a moment it seemed. But the rich fragrances lingered in the air and the infinitesimal green buds that crystallized and grew were a promise of summer’s bounty.

In the long, sultry, summer days, the green buds morphed into plump, dark sweet cherries. I climbed the old cherry tree on those summer days just to see how high I could go, staring into the endless blue sea above. I would walk across and hang down from sturdy branches, enjoying nature’s playground.

In the twilight of summer, the cherries rotted, and I knew my carefree days were coming to an end. I watched as the green leaves leached red, until turning dark as the bark on the old cherry tree. Then they fell, collecting on the ground just as the white blossom petals in the spring.

Autumn brought dwindling days and cooler nights, but my playful intrigue with the old cherry tree was not done. I pulled on a sweater and ran outside to pile the umber-brown, crunchy leaves. After diving into the pile of decay, I lay there gazing through the skeletal branches at tumbling clouds in the blue vault, a cool breeze gathering a few of the leaves to scatter.

On autumn nights, when a harvest moon sat yellow in the sky, shadows bent through my bedroom windows and formed like ominous Rorschach inkblots on my walls. The eerie shapes set a troubled feeling in me, and I knew the long nights of winter were lurking.

As the seasons pooled, eddied, and were swept along in the grand river of time, they took with them my youth and the old cherry tree. No longer does it stand outside my bedroom window. Sometimes I wonder, has it all been a dream, something neither past nor present, merely a feeling submerged in my subconscious? But when summer returns, and those plump, rich, dark cherries are ripe, I’ll find a cherry tree and pick one down, graze my finger across the velvety skin of the fruit, and take a bite. The bittersweet flavor brings back the memories of my playful youth. I savor the taste of those carefree days, and I am reminded that it was all much more than a dream. It was a life lived, one of countless others; and I know that as one life ends, another begins, no worse or better, only different in nature.

And so, where once there stood outside my bedroom window an old cherry tree, now is a bed of lilacs, whose beauty, fragrance, and eventual memory are no worse or better, only different in nature.