my cherry tree and its summer memories

In my backyard, there is a large Rainier cherry tree that casts a good amount of shade over a flat, bright green section of my lawn. Now that July has arrived and the tree’s fruit is turning a deep, shiny red under the summer sun, I like to set up a wooden bistro chair and a matching wooden table under its branches and sit quietly. I put my bare, calloused feet into the Kentucky Bluegrass and set a cocktail down on the table, usually an Empress Gin Aviator or a Coors Light, and I think about summer. When I fix an Aviator, it’s often so cold it hurts my hands (I set my fridge’s temperature to “five” to make the liquor really cold).

I always bring a book with me when I'm sitting under the tree; lately, it’s “Training for the Uphill Athlete,” but I never read the book. The book’s just for show. Instead, I stare out at the lawn, the vegetable garden slowly expanding outwards from the wooden containers, sprawling pumpkin vines, and my son’s toys scattered across the patio. I think about all of the work that I’ve done to transform the weedy backyard mess into a green oasis for my son. Sometimes, while I’m sitting under the cherry tree, the wind blows up from the ocean and shakes the branches and leaves, dislodging a few cherries from their stems. Sometimes one will hit me on the top of my head, knocking loose a thought from the backseat of my mind. This sets off a chain of thoughts, and I let them come and go.

While I’m sitting there, in my bistro chair, I wonder if the tree will continue to produce cherries in one hundred years. I wonder if the house will still be here in two hundred years or if the next family who eventually moves in will tear it down, because we won’t live forever. I wonder what this backyard will look like in 300 years, and whether any of my son’s toys will be buried in the garden and dug up by another child who is part robot. Oh, by the way, I’m currently measuring everything by a century yardstick because of my son’s obsession with the number one hundred. Everything is one hundred these days. “I love you one hundred, dada,” he says before bed. “Love you one hundred, too, son,” I say back as I'm pulling the blinds down on his window that looks out over the cherry tree. Often, when I’m sitting, I think about the memories we’re making in the house and where they'll eventually end up. I wonder how much of this summer we’ll remember. We’re the fourth family to live in the home, according to public records, and those families must have sat under the cherry tree and eaten its fruit as well. One of the families had an above-ground pool (I found aerial photos in the municipality's records), and I think about how those children must have gobbled down cherries in the pool while floating on light blue air mattresses, spitting cherry pits onto the burned-out lawn.

I think about my son’s toys and how they look lonely without him. And I think about how he no longer plays with his monster trucks as often as he used to, despite being obsessed with them for the past two years. The once-shiny paint on the monster trucks is fading in the summer sun, and I know this will be the last summer he plays with them, even Megalodon, his favourite. I think about how I should finally build that sandbox, or a mud pit, as he calls it, but he hasn’t asked me about it in weeks. I think about how this is one of the last summers that he will truly be young; one of the last summers he will be small. I think about how my body is aging and how my body doesn’t move like it used to, especially when I'm pounding the pavement on a morning run. I think about how these summer days feel so short compared to the endless summer afternoons up at the cabin on Okanagan Lake I experienced as a child.

I think about how it won’t be long before the ravens, wasps, and raccoons come for the rotting cherries, and I think about how I won’t try to chase them off. That’s a fool’s errand; I enjoy the tree and its cherries the best I can, when I can. When I’m done sitting, sipping, and thinking, I fold up my wooden bistro chair and rest it against the trunk of the tree, put my hand on the lichen-covered bark, and say, “Tree, you’ve seen a lot,” and take a final mouthful of the now warm drink. And then I say to myself, “I’ve seen a lot too, and I’m glad I’ve seen a lot. I want to continue to see a lot.” The tree’s leaves rustle in the summer breeze, and I take it as a nod.