A peach blossom in the Avenues
We have arrived at our collective anniversary and we won’t be blowing up party balloons. Our earth has traveled an entire rotation around the sun, and 7 ½ billion people have been suspended in uncertainty. More than 2 ½ million of us are no longer on the planet.
As the pandemic anniversary comes and goes, I’ve been thinking about my step-mother Lynda. Dad died Jan. 2, which seems like just a wink or two in the continuum.
These days I talk to him in my car when I commute to school, and I know Lynda’s life is unalterably changed.
Teaching 7th graders keeps my mind occupied and being busy is my favorite avoidance tool. Grief sneaks in during quiet times, or manages a stealthy stab as I hold myself together with a firm grip.
When I think of my dad, I often think of my stepmother in the quiet house.
I lost someone once, I remember.
Dad loved to talk. His voice was deep and the tone carried. He laughed at his own jokes and he joked a lot.
When a voice is gone, the quiet becomes heavy. Everyday fixtures — furniture, clothes, the reflection in the mirror — are shadowed. Our uninterrupted thoughts seem unfamiliar and amplified. Tick tock.
After my Handsome Woodsman died, the usual joys of the season simply exaggerated the reality of his absence. Music played and people shopped. I compared each annual ritual with those that would not recur — white lights on a potted jalapeno plant, New Year’s Eve kisses or table reservations for a birthday.
For Lynda, this quiet year has just begun. Valentine’s Day came and went and she will celebrate the first day of spring without a hand to hold. Each of these special days can feel like an insult.
In many ways, living through COVID has felt similar. Those first few months I listened to the birds in my neighborhood, and took walks while talking to my dad on the phone. I missed my rituals. In November my family gathered via Zoom and no one carved a turkey. Gifts were exchanged in January, each of us wearing a mask and shivering on Mom’s back patio.
Tick tock.
I’m not so bold to say we are nearing the end of the Great Seclusion. I’ve been holding my breath for so long I’m almost getting used to the uncertainty. Yet, I can’t help but notice that the world keeps spinning.
This week I spotted the first peach blossom on the tree I planted two years ago. Just one blossom, but I’ll take what I can get.
The tree was a gift from Angie, one of the garden helpers at Blue Oak Charter School, where I shepherded a class through third grade, once upon a time.
Even without a pandemic, life has changed in a thousand ways and will change again.
In 2019, the peach tree was in a onegallon pot, and Angie said it is a native. When you plant the pit of the fruit, a tree will grow identical to the mother plant, unlike hybrid peach trees, she said with enthusiasm that spring day in the school garden. The skin is soft and bruises easily, but it will be many years before I need to worry about too much fruit. Now the tree reaches my chin.
I’ve waited all this time for backyard peaches and may wait a little longer.
Yet, the first bloom is a very good sign.