"I went to see the preacher, to teach me how to pray / He looked and me and smiled, then that preacher turned away / He said, "If you want to tell him something, you ain't gotta fold your hands / Say it with your heart, your soul and believe it / And I say 'Amen'."
Jon Bon Jovi, "Bang a Drum"
It is an unbelievably beautiful evening, and as I've said before, us Iowans never take good weather for granted. The sun is notably setting before eight now, signaling summer's wind down, but what a glorious one it's been. The thermometer never got close to a hundred and I can count on my fingers how many times it broached ninety. The air conditioner's been off more than off these first thirteen days of August, a miracle in and of itself.
Right now, I sit on my back deck, in a reclining lawn chair my wife and children bought for me a couple of Father's Days ago. I had to plug in my computer because I've been out here now for several hours, listening to my "Relaxation/Spirituality" playlist, drinking coffee and water, perusing Facebook to see how many people care that it's my birthday, reading magazines and the newspaper, and watching apples fall.
A crabapple tree rises out of our backyard, just in front of the hedge that separates us from the private school behind us. The apples it sheds are the bane of my existence. In late July they start to fall and they do so unceasingly until the middle of September; right now they are in their prime and I would guess there is one falling, literally, every two minutes since I've been out here. They are too small for anything except making juice but too big for the lawnmower, and really, how much apple juice can a person drink?
When we first moved into this house, Niko was three months old and Orlando didn't yet exist. I picked up every single apple by myself and made the mistake of putting them all into a couple of yard waste bags. The city wouldn't take them because the bags weighed far more than their fifty pounds per bag limit. Before I was able to buy more yard waste bags, it rained. I spent an entire afternoon in 2006 simply moving wet apples from one bag to another, then weighing them on a bathroom scale to make sure they came in under fifty pounds, and scrawling that weight with a black Sharpie on the bag so there would be no confusion with the city. "47 pounds". "45 pounds". "49 pounds". I think there were eight before I finished.
A few years later, as Niko and Orlando were getting older and we needed that backyard space for our frequent games of catch and soccer, I spent a day trimming limbs from our lovely apple tree so that the leaves wouldn't hang in our face, then realized I had no way to dispose of them. I ended up dragging them to the curb and some guy I found in the yellow pages came by with his truck and a chainsaw and took them off of me for fifty bucks.
"How much," I asked him, "would you charge me just to cut the damn thing down and haul it away?"
He looked it over and said, "Well, I'm not working too much these days. Two hundred bucks."
I told him I'd think about it and call him if I decided to go for it. It was May and the apples weren't falling yet, and as always, there were lots of things in our life calling for a couple hundred dollars. I never called the guy back. By August, on my knees on hot mornings, it was clear that that had been one of the worst non-decisions of my life.
*****
Time passes, though, of course, and now my kids are now eight and six--perfect ages to crouch down and pick up apples. I keep them supplied in yard waste bags, check the yard on Saturday mornings before I mow, and give them three bucks a week to keep us apple free. I tell myself I'm teaching them responsibility and the value of hard work. I suspect my motives are more self-serving than that, but I don't feel like self-analysis right now. For now, my apple tree and I live under the auspices of an uneasy truce.
*****
One just hit the ground. For all my awful experience with them, I don't know if before today, I've actually seen one fall down to the ground. It's a feast for the senses. You watch the tree, and when you feel a breeze, you unfocus. You hear it first, the snap of the stem that was connecting the apple to the tree. You zone in on that snap, and if you're lucky, you find it, you trace it's fall, probably bumping into a couple of limbs on the way down, then clearing the limbs and free falling the remaining fifteen feet. Gravity is an unstoppable force. It hits the ground, which is inclined, and rolls down the hill, finding someplace to rest, what with friction also being an unstoppable force. There it will rest for anywhere between 24 and 72 hours, when Niko or Orlando pick it up and throw it into a yard waste bag, which the city will then carry off to compost. In a year it will be rich black soil, ready for a flower or vegetable garden, and I will be busy with something else, and I will have no recollection whatsoever of our brief time together.
*****
Every fucking year goes faster than the last one, you know? Every fucking one. Since I've been old enough to think about it, that's been the case. And tonight, I'm gonna sit here and tell myself that "No, not this time, this year I'm really gonna pay attention, I'm really gonna treasure it, and it'll go by, sure, but not so quickly."
But honestly it ain't gonna be that way. And I don't think it's supposed to be. If we spend all our time reflecting, how much are we really living? And really, if something is good, it should go by fast. I mean, when we say we've had a long day, what are we saying? We're saying it fucking sucked and we're glad it's over. We may be even making excuses for some sort of poor behavior with ourselves and our fellows.
*****
Such is life. My wife just came out and lit some smelly candles so the mosquitoes don't bother me; it's almost completely dark now. The fireflies are coming out. The crickets are singing along with Garth Brooks' "What She's Doing Now." There's a pizza on the way. Birthday food. In a few minutes I'm gonna head back in and eat and watch some TV with Sonia. Parks and Rec, maybe. Or a Mexican soap opera.
Not yet, though. I'm gonna hang on to this moment, this year, just a bit longer, see who follows Garth, enjoy the cool water, listen to the crickets. Feel the breeze between my toes, hear a stem crack, and watch, with what little light remains, a few more apples fall to the ground and come to rest, before Niko and Orlando dispose of them, before they change and I do too, before everything and everyone are different from the way they are right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment