Wild
Fruit
“Let us
learn to appreciate that there will be times when the trees will be
bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.”
Anton
Chekhov
As winter moves into the
deep South, the trees are confused. They know they're supposed to
drop their leaves right now, but temperatures are still in the
seventies. The maple tree in my front yard has red-tipped leaves, as
though they started to change and then thought better of it. I'm sure
the leaves will eventually fall, but it may be simply because they
get tired of waiting for the proper signals.
The persimmon trees
dropped their fruit early. I think they were simply so hot, they
cooked on the twig and fell off, soft and mushy. What a strange year.
Trees and fruit are such apt metaphors for our own transition times.
For one thing, they teach us patience—they make us wait. We wait
for the leaves to emerge in spring, for the tree to flower, and fruit
to form and grow and ripen. Then we wait some more for the colors to
change in autumn and limbs to bare themselves in winter.
There are years without
fruit entirely—bare limbs become dead trees. This, too, we must
endure. Other years, the fruit is so abundant we can't harvest all of
it. We leave it for the critters to eat. Cycles—birth, life, death,
rebirth—repeat year after year in all forms of life. They cannot be
rushed, they will come and go in their own time. This is the way of
life that even we brainy humans cannot change. We do best when we
learn to go with the flow—gather the fruit when it falls, and
appreciate the green leaves and the bare limbs equally. “All shall
be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be
well.” (Julian of Norwich) [Thanks to Anna Dudley]
In the Spirit,
Jane
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