Is it a tree or is it me?

Is it the tree, or me?

Is it real or a dream?

The pear tree had been planted on the day of my birth. It started to bear fruit when I was three years old, it was at its most productive from five years to forty five years, which is the normal and average for a conference pear in this part of England. Then into a steady reduction in the yearly crop of the best cooking pears you could find. Now it was past its best, just the occasional show of blossom and even more rare, a small crop of fruit, to remind of its past glories. All exactly like myself. The most creative years seem to be behind me. The tree and I are both sixty years old; yet I still strive to burst out with meaningful production, still keen to claim my former place as a success and a worthwhile provider. Like the tree, my roots are firm in the ground, the spirit is willing but the bees no longer buzz around the blooms and no one expects to harvest my out put. When you start to make comparisons they become uncanny. The conference pear is almost self fertile and I never needed outside inspiration to start creative work. The pears were best picked before full ripeness, stored and then cooked with skill. My writing was best when a skilled editor got me to rework the final draft before any publisher saw it. The last fifteen years have been an ever increasing rate of failure and ineptitude. Just as the tree lost is productive vigor, so did I. Now young people do not even realize the tree is a pear tree, one that once provided well for the household, similarly they do not know I was once a popular author. My work no longer in fashion and never was good enough to be called a classic. Out of print, out of mind, just like the tree.

Where once was a manicured lawn spreading out around the tree, there is now a scrawny patch of wasteland, my home stands a relic of the past, again just like the tree, while modern developments surround us and mock us with their vibrant modernity. No birds nest in the branches, no curls hang around my ears, leaves fall early in the season and my charms have fled altogether. I and the tree have become as one. My life entwined with its life and my future as bleak as its is. They, a wealthy and noisy neighboring family, want to buy my home, cut down the tree, demolish my house and build a garage and games room. Why not? neither the tree or I have much else to look forward to, but have I the right to decide that the tree should be cut down sawed up into pieces and burnt in the latest magazine trendy, log burning stove? Especially as it is a stove used for show rather than actually a need for warmth.

A pear tree, as all fruit trees, is a living thing with a purpose, a genuine reason for existing, it is not an ornament but a thing of function, a good many years ago, it was one that was necessary for survival and wellbeing. Now fruit can be bought in the supermarket all the year round, now fruit, and all food, is wasted, bought and discarded, valued for appearance rather than taste or life supporting nutrition. Again such similarities to my own life. During the years of the war, pears were stored with care or bottled after being so carefully peeled, cored and boiled in segments. Now the thought of such effort is enough to horrify the extravagantly dressed and perfumed lady of the house. They forget the ambiance of those years, the fear, the expectation of hunger and even death, the mental strength that allowed people to volunteer for the most hazardous of duties, since duty was accepted as both necessary and obligatory. Now; duty is totally absent from both life and vocabulary; anyone under the age of fifty seems to believe only in their “human rights,” in their personal agenda to be believed, regardless of evidence. The tree and I belong to that past, where acceptance of deprivation was normal. The past we lived through, was a time when the collective was genuine, we all lived or died at the whim of the gods of war. Now they march and wave banners claiming socialism for the many not the few. They claim the whole world must sacrifice wealth and luxury, so that all can be equal. Yet they still do not understand, they do not accept, that they are the ones who should sacrifice their ego driven arguments, to make an equality that is acceptable to the many, not one only acceptable to only those few who go on the march and are waving the banners. Capital and labour should be in cooperation, neither dominant, neither subservient, when both work for the same ends the nation flourishes, and triumphs; as in the war. Just as the tree needs both rain and sun, these are not natures opposites but are the complementing forces, the yin and yang, the light and the darkness. All have to co-exist, each is dependent on the other to make one whole.

I sit in the shade of the tree, should it have a name? It almost had a personality to go with its history, my history, our history; so it should have a name and it certainly should not be cut down to make room for a show piece games room. I drift off into a sleep and dream that I wake to find there is only the tree and myself left in the world, all has gone, the ugly modern houses, even my home, all vanished. In the distance I can see another tree, a smaller younger tree. The long grass wafts and swirls about, the gentle breeze making patterns and pictures from the ever moving grass. I start to walk but have no need, the thought alone brings me to the younger tree, asleep under its still slender branches is a younger me. Looking back the way I had come, my older tree has vanished and in its place a tiny tender sapling, a mere stick, less that two feet tall and as slender as a willow wand and laying beside it is the new born me. I look beyond this new me into a past before my birth. There is just a vast expanse of moving grass, no trees, no people, just time stretching out waiting to be filled. I turn around back to my younger self asleep under the younger tree. Moving back to their side I look to one side and see so many possibilities, so many trees and each with a different me asleep in their shade. To my left and to my right I can see many thousands of such possibilities but if look back, only the one, the infant tree and the infant me. I look straight ahead,in line with the past and the now and I see all to clearly an empty space, no tree and no me.

I wake from my dream having decided not to sell, not to allow the tree to be disrespected. We will fade from this life together, It may be all I have and I may be its only protector but together we will go on for many years even if I have to prop up its branches as I will need sticks to hold myself up. We will go on until the new has become the old. The arrogance faded and crushed by reality. The tree and I will still be here, my home with its cellar of bottled pears will gather dust but survive until all that is modern is replaced by a new modern. The ancient civilization of the Danes and Norse, believed in a tree of life and under its roots lived the three spinners who wove the tapestry of life, of fate, for each and every one of us. What fates are woven with my pear tree? I now know I should not give up, the spinners have still some thread left. May be tomorrow I will plant a new pear tree or even two or three They will survive without me. There may be a new family who will come to my home; one that respects the past, believes in the laws of nature rather than the demands of fashion. It may be that one will learn to pluck the fruit just before fully ripe, and then they will go back in time to learn the ways preserve the fruit, to preserve life.