Under the Pear Tree

A backyard full of ripe fruit trees towards the end of summer is an interesting place to be. Rotten pieces litter the ground and patches of grass are beginning to yellow. There is a certain peace in the aura of the late summer but also the slightest stench of fruit juice and wildfire smog drifting through the air. Why do things get heavy when the season starts to mellow? Things fall apart but then they get patched back together, but does that always happen? I look at the piles of pears and plums before me and the hundred or so still hanging down above my head. I see that many are scarred, a few have holes, and some are almost perfect. One pear stands out to me as I think of all that has happened in the past four years of my life. Four summers ago I was a completely different person. Senior year of college with a few close friends who treated me well. Thinking back on it now my life could probably be equated to a pear that fell before the right time and became damaged by all its surroundings.

I told my brother I related to a rotten pear. “Of all the fruits… you don’t even like pears,” he said. It is something about the texture it is true! But this year is different. I picked them and separated them all into sections. Rotten or weeping, under ripe, and nearly perfect. I sat there thinking about how my last pear to sort was extremely scarred and healed over. No one would probably like this one came across my mind several times. I don’t know what came over me, but I wiped it off and pulled out my pocketknife to slice it up. I ate the entire thing without thinking. It was the sweetest and juiciest pears I had ever eaten. It made me smile and I hate pears. These backyard fruit trees probably saw a lot of weird stuff over the years and were party to conversations they might have wanted to add some input to. Once you have life changing moments it is kind of easy to start questioning the meaning of everything, but only after going through what I think the darkness is a fitting name for.

Thinking back to an hour ago to when I thought a rotten pear was a metaphor to my life, I realized I was the deeply scarred pear that still had everything to offer. Four years after a breakdown and loss of everything that my life meant at the time, I reached some weird conclusion that I was doing just fine because of a piece of fruit from my backyard. Except this is not really how it happened. I woke up with my head leaned up against one of the trees as my brother asked if I was okay. “You fell off the ladder with a pear in your hand! You started laughing and said you were okay, but when I came back you were really sleepy.” What? I looked down and in my hand was this pear completely scarred and still uneaten. I took a bite and concussion me was right, it was the sweetest pear. My mind plays tricks on me, see my brother wasn’t really there either. He was gone. Had been for ages. You think you’re not going to be that weirdo imagining a lost relative, until you are. This sweet pear though, maybe my brain really doesn’t hate me and is looking out for me after all. This living life thing, I think I’ve got it down. All thanks to a pear and a ladder with questionable footing. Maybe I will return those phone calls after all.