In a past life I must have been an apple tree with extensive roots and robust branches standing strong in my senescence against the wind and rain and sun.
Someone must have cared for me, watched me through the seasons, pruning and snipping, pinching and nourishing me to ensure I produced my bushels and pecks.
Someone must have wandered in the field where my arboreal family also grew. Wondering and marveling looking up into the midst of our deciduous forms. Catching the first signs of frost. Removing suckers and sprouts with a nurses care.
Someone must have snapped fresh fruit from my branch and bitten deeply whole mouthed into the juicy sweet sun ripened pulp the legacy of the apple I once was. Someone who must have known the simple pleasure of such endeavors. Someone who had the patience enough to know not to force the fruit from the limb and that the wait would be worth it.
Someone must have planted me. Pinched me between pointer finger and thumb and carefully placed me into a tiny indent in the rich soil of my ancestors. Someone must have watched me grow from sapling into a brawny tower casting shadows on the grass below me. Someone must have known me well. My curves. My weak spots. My strength. Someone who could envision my future yield.
Someone must have known that an apple tree is more than a producer of toothsome sweets. And that an apple tree is a wonder of nature. Weathering storms. Withstanding blustering gales. Protecting its seed-bearers. Blooming and hibernating cyclically and predictably. Someone who looked every day from the window and gazed upon the tree coming to know it’s different guises. Someone who never tired of looking at the tree. Who studied it’s lines to memory. Who made notes year to year and recorded its life in meticulous detail.
Someone must have made pies from my fruit. Cut the butter into the flour and honed the crust like a seasoned baker. Someone who washed and sliced and sugared the apples and carefully rolled the dough. Who then formed a heap in the dish and carefully laid the top crust and crimped the edges and brushed the surface with cream and a sprinkle of sugar. Someone who knew to wait until the sugar bubbled and the crust was brown but not burnt before removing it from the oven’s warm embrace. Someone who was patient and knew that waiting for the pie to cool would allow the depth of flavor to come through and the filling to solidify so that when sliced it held up to gravity. Someone who had the endurance to then whip fresh cream to stiff peaks with which to adorn it.
I must have been waited for year after year after year. By someone with the foresight and wisdom to know that the best fruit comes to those who are patient. To those who have come to know the ebb and flow of the seasons and that time rolls on. That each season has its gifts and its hardships to bear. And as late summer fades and begins to turn to early fall I held fruits for you and we greeted as old friends.
Why I wrote this:
The other day I was trying to understand why people have such affinity for the things that they do. Some people love animals. Some people love nature. Some people love lounging around the house or running or flying.
I was thinking about the things I love and apple trees are one of them. I really grew to love them on trips to my wife’s grandparents home in La Conner. The fruit was like nothing I had ever had in a store and the landscape was idyllic and picturesque with a den of trees looking out upon a Pacific Northwest bay. I learned about the trees by talking with her grandfather and the caretaker who helped him plant the trees and grafted them with new fruit from time to time. I don’t know even a fraction of what they do but I feel the same reverence and love for the trees. And the fond memories of my wife’s grandfather envelop my thoughts of the trees with a special aura. His generosity of giving both knowledge and fruit opened a pathway into my heart and my place in the family.
I was thinking that maybe the things we love in our physical life come from having once experienced that love in our past lives as that tree or animal or place. Maybe I love to care for apple trees because I was an apple tree cared for by someone else in my metaphysical past.
Or perhaps I see parallels between my physical and emotional stature and that of a strong and tried and true apple tree. Who knows? It’s a nice thought though isn’t it?
What do you love that makes you wonder about your existence?
