Planting a tree you may never sit under is a difficult struggle with our human desire for immediate rewards. You will discover how to embrace generational thinking to leave a lasting mark. This story helps you find peace in the long game.
He packed the clay in around the roots with the heel of his hand, the way a person tamps tobacco, firm and unhurried. The burlap he folded and set on the edge of the hole like a small flag surrendered. I was maybe eight, sitting on the back steps with a popsicle going soft - watching the orange drip onto the concrete. He didn't look up when he said it would be a good twenty years before that tree gave anything worth eating. I remember thinking twenty years wasn't a number that applied to me.
The bucket left a wet crescent on the concrete each time he set it down to rest his back. The pantyhose was the color of a Band-Aid and he knotted it twice, the same two-handed knot he used on his shoes. Once I counted his steps - forty-one going out, thirty-nine coming back, because the bucket was empty and he walked faster. The sapling was maybe as tall as the mailbox by the end of that first summer, still thin enough that the pantyhose looked like it was doing most of the work. He checked the knot every time - even when nothing had changed, pressing the bark lightly with one thumb the way a person tests a peach.
The catalog had coffee rings on the cover and he'd bent the spine back so far it had given up fighting. He circled a Reliance peach with three slow loops, then wrote a year in the margin in the handwriting he used for important things - capital letters, the pen pressed down. The concentrator's plastic tubing ran across the linoleum and under the chair leg, and he'd tucked it there himself so nobody would trip. He licked the ballpoint once when it skipped - the way he always had, then kept going. Outside the window the tree he'd planted when I was eight was throwing shade on the fence, and he didn't look at it, because he didn't need to.
The Bucket and the Pantyhose Stake
The girl had a yellow highlighter behind one ear and her notebook was open to a page dense with pencil. The tree had gone up in a way I hadn't seen, thicker through the middle than my wrist - than my arm, something in between that I didn't have a word for. I sat in the car with the engine off and watched a petal let go and drift down and land on the open page and the girl didn't brush it away. The shadow crossed her knee, her notebook, the grass beyond her in a shape that looked, from where I was sitting - almost exactly like a card table. I put my hand on the door handle and then I didn't open it.
The engine idled and the vents were blowing air I didn't need anymore. She had a thermos with a dent in it, the kind that comes from a backpack, and she set it on the grass without looking and it didn't fall over. My hands were at ten and two, which is where my father's hands always were, and I noticed that the way I notice a word spelled wrong. She turned a page and the petal was gone - somewhere inside the notebook now, pressed between whatever she was reading and whatever came next. My throat did the thing it was doing and the tree didn't care and the girl didn't know and the fruit was just beginning to come in heavy on the lower branches, where the light was good.
The catalog had warped from sitting in the trunk, the cover lifting at one corner like a page that wants to be turned. I set it on the counter next to the seed packet, which was smaller than I'd expected - smaller than a playing card, with a photo of cherries so red they looked painted. His three slow loops around the Reliance peach were still there, the ink gone a little brown at the edges the way ink does. I pressed the corner of the catalog flat with my palm and it rose again when I let go. The seed packet hadn't been opened and the catalog had, and they sat there together on the tile under the kitchen light, and I left them both there and went to bed.
The Shadow He Never Sat In
The cherry tree I planted that April is still in the wire cage - still shorter than the fence post next to it, and I've to step over the soaker hose every time I go out to check it, which is every morning, even in the cold. The seed packet is in the junk drawer now, tucked behind the dead batteries - and I haven't thrown it away. I went out last Tuesday and knelt in the wet grass and pressed the bark with one thumb the way he did, light, just to feel whether anything had changed, and it hadn't, and I pressed it again anyway. The catalog is still on the counter with the corner still lifting and I've started circling things in it - slowly, with the pen pressed down.
The hardware store had a bin of wooden stakes near the door, bundled with orange twine, and I stood there longer than a person should stand in front of a bin of stakes. I took four, which was three more than I needed - and the cashier put them in a bag without looking up. That night I cut a length of pantyhose from a pair I hadn't worn since my father's funeral and knotted it twice, the same knot, two-handed, the way you learn a thing without being taught. The stake went in harder than I expected and I had to use my heel, and the sound it made going into the ground was the same sound a door makes when it finally closes all the way. I checked the knot before I went inside - and the bark was cool under my thumb, and above me the kitchen light was on, and through the window I could see the catalog on the counter, the corner lifting.
The nursery had a row of bare-root peaches along the back wall, their roots wrapped in damp newspaper the color of old snow - and I stood in front of them with my hands in my pockets until a kid in an apron asked if I needed help and I said no, which wasn't entirely true. I bought one anyway, a Reliance, and carried it to the car with both arms the way a person carries something asleep. At home I set it against the fence post next to the cherry and the two of them stood there in the late light, the cherry in its cage and the peach with its roots still bundled - and the pantyhose I'd knotted for the cherry was the same color as the newspaper around the peach's roots, which I hadn't planned and couldn't stop looking at. I went inside and got the catalog and brought it outside and sat on the back steps with it, the way I had sat on those other steps with the popsicle going soft, and I opened it to the page with his three loops and held it flat with one hand against the wind, and read what he had written in the margin - the year, in capital letters, and then I wrote a year beneath it in the same hand, pressing down.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional, financial - medical, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
