The Apple Tree

One of my fonder memories of my grandfather is me sitting beside him on a wooden swing while he examined an apple. It was one that I’d picked from the young apple tree growing behind our camper and I was curious about it. I was curious about everything at that age. I remember him telling me what kind he thought it was-an American Mother I believe- and I remember him cutting it up for me to try. It wasn’t ripe, so it was hard and bitter, but I still laughed as I spit it out.

That apple tree stood behind our camper for over ten years before it finally fell this spring, or maybe it was this winter. I want to think it was the day my grandma tried to sell the land it sat on. I want to think that it was my grandpa’s doing because he loved that apple tree just as much as he loved that place. 

That apple tree fell the year we almost lost our home, the place my sister and I grew up. It fell before anyone else could get their hands on the once sweet and juicy apples that had grown hard and bitter over the last few years. It fell just weeks before my eighteenth birthday and my high school graduation because like so many people and things, it wasn’t there to see either of them.

I knew for weeks that the apple tree had fallen, but it wasn’t until I finally saw it that it hit me. It was more than just an apple tree, it was my childhood. It was summers and summers of fresh apples to both eat and hit with a board or bat in some semblance of baseball. It was playing fetch with the dogs and sickeningly sweet smell of rotten apples on a cool fall afternoon. It was laughing at a boy who had climbed to the top and dodging the apples that he threw down. The apple tree was full of memories and good ones at that. Good memories tend to be hard to come by at that campground.

When I saw that apple tree, it was like a load of bricks hit me. The feelings going through me were overwhelming. High school was practically over and college was just a few months away. This could be my last summer and that terrified me. Seeing that apple tree laying on its side with its roots half exposed, it almost felt like it was the end. Life as I knew it was over. But maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s good sign, a hopeful sign. Life won’t be the same, but that’s not to say it can’t be good.