Second Life
In apple season, memories of backyard harvests
It is apple season, and the autumn equinox, and Rosh Hashanah. And, for me, it is many months since my last post here, in which I shared my eulogy for my father. It is the season for tilting at writing, and for reaching to live in the moment, in the small spaces between ruminating on what comes next (building plans, and where’s and when’s and what if’s). It is writing season again, offshoots growing from poem prompts.
This one from today, is unfinished, like all of us.
We bought the apple trees at Home Depot. I have a vague memory of that, so it may be true. We planted them in the narrow bed of soil next to the garage, on either side of the narrow side door, a wooden relic from the 1930's. We passed through that door to do our laundry, or get a bike, or, during Covid days, to spend all day in there on the couch, with the wide garage door open to the view of a trampoline on overgrown grass, the dogs resting under it, with the Possmans’ fuschia bouganvillea spilling over the fence and catching the top of the plum tree.
The apple trees stood against the garage wall that framed a courtyard, connected to the house by a cement brick wall painted the same color, creating the sense of enclosure.
These apple trees grew to a small size they could never burst past, given the small space allocated to them. I trained them to stay against the garage and not go beyond the two feet of soil they were in, so their branches would not interfere with the basketball games played on that courtyard patio. So limited, they never expressed their full selves — no stretch of their arms, nor swinging them in a wide circle. Still, they gave us tastes of sweetness, small apples, before the squirrels got to them.
Get Laura Nicole Diamond’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I had a tough time pruning them the way I was told I’d need to for the apples to grow as they should. A collection of five or six budding apples on a single stem had to be reduced to two (at most) if they were to have any chance to become right-sized. I believed this, but I hated pulling off tiny apples that could have become mature if only I’d chosen to remove a different one of the bunch. I saved those little sacrifices, cupped in my hands, or in pockets of my sweatshirts, and let them have a second life in a small bowl in the kitchen, preferably the green ceramic bowl with light brown squiggles we received as a wedding gift, perfect for these red and green swirls of beauty — apple eyed, apple cheeked, apple art — before tossing them in a green bin.
The boys didn’t eat our trees’ fruit. They preferred their apples from the supermarket. Somehow those were more trustworthy. Probably because my boys sometimes peed outside, like dogs, for fun rather than necessity. They’d ask as they lifted an apple to their mouths about its origins.
Our scrawny apple trees bore witness to my boys for so many years. To their soft-knuckled shapes, round-bellied and concentrating on sending their Hot Wheels down a four-lane plastic racing ramp, making predictions about which would finish first, and keeping track of their wins and losses on handwritten spreadsheets.
To my young men in their full-grown shapes, playing basketball on the patio with the the second-hand hoop we’d placed there when Aaron was in kindergarten, bought when his friend’s family had to move from the village to the Highlands because their landlord was selling their house.
Hard passes and rebounds bounced off the trees, unbreakable in their stoic if stunted size. I became convinced that the hits they took made them stronger. Their leaves shook but held on, and though small apple beads fell at their bases, they stood upright, their roots dug in, saying this is where you planted us, and here we will remain.
We do not know what comes next — none of us. We plan and we hope and we remember the sweetness of years’ past. We slice apples and dip them in honey and lick our fingers, and try to remember that the present is what we have.
Laura Nicole Diamond is the author of Shelter Us: a novel, Dance with Me: a love letter, and editor of the anthology Deliver Me: True Confessions of Motherhood. She is an immigration attorney in Los Angeles. For more, please visit LauraNicoleDiamond.com.
For unlimited access to articles on Medium, use this link to become a member. A portion of your membership will support my writing. Thanks!
