Thanks for sharing this Charlotte. I'm so sorry for your, and our collective community's loss. I never got the chance to meet John, but I'm grateful for the compassion and companionship you offered him. That's the essence of community.
We planted a sour cherry tree from Michigan in our backyard in Chicago a couple years after we moved in. For ten years, every July was met with the joys of picking, pitting can putting up those sweet tart morsels so we'd have them year round. Then the tree got some sort of blister rot, and I systematically had to prune it back until by the time we left Chicago for Livingston, there wasn't much left for the new owners to do but cut it down. I could wax on about the metaphor for how the tree's life mirrored the changes in our life in Chicago and how it telegraphed our departure, but the reality is that it got sick and died. And our time in Chicago was up and we knew it.
I still miss those late July evenings pitting cherries and thinking about how I'd use them. I pulled the last jars down before we moved and baked my last pie, celebrating the chapter that was closing and the next one that was just getting started.
Thanks for sharing this Charlotte. I'm so sorry for your, and our collective community's loss. I never got the chance to meet John, but I'm grateful for the compassion and companionship you offered him. That's the essence of community.
We planted a sour cherry tree from Michigan in our backyard in Chicago a couple years after we moved in. For ten years, every July was met with the joys of picking, pitting can putting up those sweet tart morsels so we'd have them year round. Then the tree got some sort of blister rot, and I systematically had to prune it back until by the time we left Chicago for Livingston, there wasn't much left for the new owners to do but cut it down. I could wax on about the metaphor for how the tree's life mirrored the changes in our life in Chicago and how it telegraphed our departure, but the reality is that it got sick and died. And our time in Chicago was up and we knew it.
I still miss those late July evenings pitting cherries and thinking about how I'd use them. I pulled the last jars down before we moved and baked my last pie, celebrating the chapter that was closing and the next one that was just getting started.
And until your pie cherries flourish, you are welcome to pick all you want from my tree, which I planted some 20 years ago. Lovely essay; thank you.