Restless in October
My favorite month comes to an end.
As a pillar of emotional well-being, an arborist is as important as a hairdresser.
A good handyman is a well-kept secret.
A working refrigerator is the crowning achievement of civilization.
Prove me wrong.
October is my favorite month for all of the usual reasons: fall colors, crisp apples, the scent of cedar clinging to sweaters as I take them out of storage. An abundance of chocolate. Warty, improbably shaped decorative gourds. The genius of the cake designer who sticks a Barbie doll into a ballroom-gown-shaped creation frosted in black and tiered with spiders and bats, then smears her face and arms with blood-red food coloring. This — okay, next to the meat department and on the opposite side of the store from the toys, but still — at Target.
Much as I once loved to sneer at the seasonal overgrowth of PSL (pumpkin-spice latte, like a viral illness, is known by its initials) I’m now concerned by its spread into the marketplace. Not only are food items subject to its predations, but cosmetics, fragrances, home goods, and cleaning products have been pumpkin-spiced. I would not be surprised to learn that the baristas at my local paint store have been mixing in a bit of nutmeg or cinnamon to add some PSL-adjacent warmth to the walls of a drab mudroom.
My refrigerator is — oh no oh no, not PSL-toned major appliances! Did I just Beetlejuice them into existence by uttering those three letters three times in close succession? No? Whew. I can sleep tonight — Apologies. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back to coffee: In the few weeks since my refrigerator died, as I wrote about in my most recent post, I was forced to live almost entirely on shelf-stable, relatively non-perishable foods. What that means is that every morning I loaded Colombian beans into my burr grinder, set it at medium-coarse, spooned the grounds into my French press coffeemaker, brought distilled water to the correct temperature in my gooseneck electric kettle, poured it carefully, waited four minutes to push the plunger, filled my favorite mug to the rim, and then —
Ruined it by stirring in Coffee Mate powder.
When I say ruined, I mean it was indistinguishable from what you’ll get from a vending machine. Or — worse — from Starbucks, during this season which I refuse to name after their lab-escaped Level 4 scourge to humankind.
But I have exciting news.
Last Wednesday, the refrigerator of my dreams arrived. The delivery man plugged it in, and there was light.
Then came milk. Cream. Eggs. Cheese. Yogurt.
Perishables, in a state of not-perishing. There must be some Buddhist term for that. I can say only that I felt something between relief and bliss as I unpacked blueberries, cherry tomatoes, and kale from grocery sacks, and arranged them on glass shelves and in crispers.
After months of throwing out spinach gone slimy within two days after purchase, green peppers face-down in a stew of their own juices, and bolsters of ground beef questionable in the fluctuating climate of the freezer, I open the stainless-steel door and rotate containers of condiments, turning the labels to the front so I can read them.
“À demain, Bonne Maman,” I say to the raspberry preserves. Then I reach for the half-full can of Fancy Feast, remove the aluminum foil, and take it upstairs.
“Mini,” I croon, as I scoop dinner into her bowl. She stares at me from the daybed in her luxury suite, my daughter’s old room. Her eyes, all pupil, focus on the lamp behind me. At the back of her mind, something clicks into place. She stands, stretching as far as her arthritic limbs will allow. After negotiating stacks of pillows to get to the floor, she polishes off her meal with the gusto of a kitten, then returns to her meditative position on the blue and white quilt.
After twenty-two winters in this world, will she live through another?
The real question is, Why am I saying good night, in abysmal French, to a jar of jam?
The Grandparents’ Tree is restless.
That’s not what I tell my arborist, when I call for an evaluation. Obviously, his training leans in a different direction, although he’s probably heard weirder things.
“Branches are hanging over the roofline. They look unhealthy,” I say.
When it storms, when the high winds blow, they keen and wail and lash against the house.
“They scrape against the siding. Also, I’m worried about the shingles.”
The Grandparents’ Tree is a sugar maple with leaves that form a palette of soft colors in the fall: red, rose gold, and gold. We planted it in our front yard in 1987, after my father died. My mother-in-law had passed eight months earlier, and my father-in-law, eight months before that.
This curious numerology didn’t factor in to our decision to plant a single tree as a memorial to three lives. Our yard was small; trees get big. The previous owners had left us with some failing sandcherries and a thorny Russian olive, which we’d taken out right away. Empty spaces begged to be filled.
At first, I watered the sapling diligently. But I hadn’t set it properly. The base of the trunk was misaligned with the lawn’s surface. Still, it grew steadily. Twenty years later, it was fully grown and glorious. But its roots cabled the lawn, ropy and hard. Mowing was a challenge; tripping, always a concern.
My husband’s death, in April, 2023, created its own weather system. Storms no longer built predictably through hot summer afternoons, releasing typical amounts of lightning and rain before moving on. They seized mornings, nights, entire days; shook them fiercely, brought down heavy branches and carried away good black dirt. Weeks of drought followed a wet summer. A dry winter arrived the year after the third-snowiest on record. The result was a hellscape of weeds, an overgrowth of vines. Shrubs gone wild.
“Can you stop by this week?” I ask, staring out a window that hasn’t been washed in God only knows how long.
“You bet.”
When the phone rings at 8 a.m., I’ve just fallen asleep. I reach over and — yes, I remembered to put it on the charger, there’s a voicemail, but whose voice?
“ . . . coming around the corner right now. I’ll meet you in front.”
In front. Of what? Oh. Tree guy. The house. Now?
It’s not easy to get dressed when you’re ninety percent asleep. I manage clean underwear. Socks. Buttons. When I join the arborist in front, he’s staring up at some branches. They’re leafless not because it’s October, but because they didn’t leaf out in the spring. Or they did, and I didn’t notice.
He gestures towards the spreading tentacles at the maple’s base.
“Girdled,” he says.
I realize that I’m shivering, and he’s not. I’m in a flannel shirt. He’s wearing a quilted jacket. The temperature is in the low forties. So soon! It takes me a moment to remember that it’s the third week of October.
“How long has it been that way?” I ask, knowing the answer, feeling the shame of it. That my actions nearly four decades ago had caused so much damage. Knowing at the time that I was careless. I could have dug the tree out and replanted it. Made a circle of wood chips, instead of seeding grass right up to the base. Watered less. Watered more.
“From the beginning, I’d say.”
The beginning.
Before my father-in-law died, he kept calling my name. I walked into the room and he reached for my hand. Looked into my eyes.
The beginning.
When my mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was the first one she told.
The beginning.
On Parents’ Days at school, my father was the only dad there. When I took first place in spelling bees, he was the only dad there.
“How much to take it out?”
I’m detaching myself from my life savings — such as they are — more rapidly than I could have imagined. Maybe I should just go looking, once again, for a handyman with a chainsaw.
Hahahahaha.
“Take it out?”He finishes a quick sketch. “No. We can fix this. It’s just a matter of digging down and cutting these roots apart. Then we add nutrients to the soil. Do some pruning. It’s a great tree. Beautiful foliage.”
“That it is.”
He makes a few calculations on his notepad, breaking down the cost, and shows it to me. Still a lot, but only half of what I expected.
“Anything for the grandparents,” I say.
“Ah. Memorial tree.” He nods. “They’re giving you a hard time? Keeping you up at night?”
“How did you know?”
He closes his notebook. “Did you have another tree you wanted me to look at?”
“In back.”
As we scuffle through the leaves of the enormous silver maple — it gets a pass this year, except for one limb hanging over the neighbor’s house — he stops abruptly.
“It’s not the grandparents who are restless.”
As he says this, I can see that the arborist is quite young. Forty or forty-five, but with an old man’s name, Albert, and an ageless soul.
“You need to think of your children.”
My son, thirty-six; my daughter, forty. They don’t remember their grandparents, except for my mother, who died in 2001. They grew up with the tree, raked and jumped in its leaves, played under its branches. It belongs to them. I’m standing in their way.
We walk towards the apple tree. He diagnoses the problem immediately.
“Black spot. Fungal infection. We’ll take out the dead branches before winter. Three soil treatments in the spring through summer. You’ll have plenty of apples after that.”
Thirty years ago, we planted two apple trees. One was my gift to my husband. The other was his gift to me.
Ten years ago, we cut down one of them. It was sick. We couldn’t save it. The other tree kept going: blossoms in the spring, apples in the fall.
But it slowed down. Fewer blossoms; fewer apples. A big limb broke off in a storm. I thought the tree was lost.
Last spring, there were hardly any blossoms. Squirrels took a slim, sour harvest of green apples over the summer. After one bite, they’d drop them in the grass.
Last month, my six-year-old neighbor asked, “Can I have that apple?”
A single apple on the tree. I hadn’t seen it until she pointed it out.
I pulled it from the branch. Handed it to her. “The tree made it just for you,” I said.
I didn’t tell her that it was my husband’s tree. Or maybe it was mine. I can’t remember, and it doesn’t matter.
The tree now belongs to the little girl who saw that it was still alive.
I know my children will share it with her.
It’s the time of year when we remember those who’ve passed on to what is ahead for all of us. Some say that the space between this world and the next grows thinner, and we’re able to see and speak with the deceased. Do you have a story to tell? Please share it in the Comments. I’d love to hear it, and so would this community.
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October is my favorite month of the year. It’s also my husband’s birthday month. I believe he would have loved this update on the trees we planted and nurtured over the forty-three years we were married. Caring for all living things is a way of keeping in touch with those who have gone on ahead, and those who will follow. Writing is my greatest joy. Sharing these posts with you brings me indescribable happiness.
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With love,
Mary xo
A slow reeling in and unraveling…just gorgeous. And this line—“The tree now belongs to the little girl who saw that it was still alive.“ — such gentle grace..
You are a fantastic storyteller-I enjoyed this!