the peach tree

Blog Post 30.

This summer we walked to the neighbor’s peach tree to steal peaches that wouldn’t get eaten were it not for us and our devious ways. I usually wore a dress decorated with crustaceans and I would bring a dish towel to rub the surplus fuzz and stray bugs off our stolen goodies.

Today I walk by the peach tree after a heavy snow storm. The familiar branches, though bowing slightly under the weight of the snow, are still more spry than when they were fecund with fruit and deep green leaves months ago. The sound of my boots swishing through the otherwise silent snow mysteriously brings to mind the squish of a sandal walking the same route after a July-afternoon shower. The tree can offer me today nothing more than the memory of its once-potent aroma and all that we shared then.

The moments are so different, yet so essentially the same. Rooted, somehow, to the sameness of the essence of the peach tree, the sameness of the essence of the place and the sameness of the essence of the person in its presence.

A mid-winter reminder of the balance in more-than-static stability.