Tiny Pears
I try not to find myself at the old farmhouse anymore but occasionally I am pulled in. I go mostly out of curiosity but leave with feelings that had never been attached to the green and white house when my grandmother lived there.
The house now is empty. It is no longer filled with marshmallow puff, fruit-flavored soda, and small curiosities of a child but the emptiness of a home I think lost.
Change has swallowed it up but the space is steadfastly my grandmother's. I don’t know where the house will find itself in ownership in its next one hundred years but my grandmother is burnt into every inch of it.
Quite literally burnt, she accidentally set her kitchen ablaze one summer with an overheated pan full of grease and there was never not a small fire of leaves or scrap paper going in the driveway.
On this visit, I do not see her in small fires but in the trees, bushes, and peonies that have pushed their way through unweeded soil. Leave it to a spring yard to burn away the lostness and remind me of my beginnings.
It was the big tree in the corner of the driveway that got me first. I walked around the back of the house and was captivated by its blazing white blooms that would soon give way to the tiniest of dwarf pears.
In dreams, I almost always find her in a spring yard under this tree and white is the color blazing around her. To my dismay, this was not a dream and my grandmother was not waiting under the tree to ask me how my life was going since she’s been gone.
Nothing was waiting for me under the tree. Not the small flower beds that used to line the bend of the driveway or the old chairs placed in the shade. The tree wasn’t even waiting for me. I happened upon it as it was waiting for no one, not even my grandmother.
I felt a little put off that that the tree would engage in such brilliant beauty when my grandmother wasn’t here to see it. Couldn’t it have just surrendered its blooms to the most recent frost and save me this moment of sad observance?
I suppose the tree has its pride to think of and must keep its blooms to produce its tiny pears but maybe a change of bloom color would be a fair ask.
In acknowledgment of the tree living in a world of my sadness, it could change the color of its spring blooms to a light blue.
Then it can still create and sprinkle the tiny pears over the lawn.
I don’t know if the tree will ever feel my sadness, because it has not turned its flowers to blue yet. Will it not miss the old woman on the lawnmower who came to mulch its rotting pears?
Yes, it will stay busy witnessing the families of raccoons and possums that feed on the fallen pears but won’t it grow lonely when no conversations between family are floated up from the old chairs into its heavy branches.
The tree with the tiny pears was not the only one who missed the memo about my request for a sad spring yard. The lilac is still shamelessly intertwining itself and its big purple blooms in the clothesline.
The strawberries at least tripled in the cool months even though my grandmother is not here in a past life of youth to dig up the extra plants and sell bags of them for 40 cents.
And the big peony that my cousin has mowed down for several years is yet again sending little leafy chutes up in hope for a season of life.
My grandmother would want me to be like the tree with the tiny pears, the lilac with fragrant flowers, and the multiplying strawberry plants. She would want me to keep doing well and not miss her too much. She also would want me to quit harassing her spring yard by asking it to be sad.
Perhaps today I will go sit beneath the tree with the white flowers soon-to-be tiny pears and will let it know it does not have to worry about changing the color of its blooms to blue.