The Plum Tree

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written. That’s like decades on the internet, but barely a passing blink in the real world. I try to never feel badly about how much I write or don’t, but of course I always do.

In the past two weeks I’ve completed two large commissions, made another trip around the sun, made board feet of progress on my woodshop, and cursed the unbearable humidity at least 45,623 times. 

The year feels like it’s rushing by, but the days are long… a disconnect my brain can’t seem to reconcile. The fall that hasn’t started yet feels like it’s already slipping through my grasp as I prep for workshops and open studio events. The fact that I’m even considering doing such things is a luxury; it wasn’t long ago that life felt too uncertain. But while traces of uncertainty still linger, they have a different flavor now… one I can’t quite put my finger on.

One that says life still goes on, even if we don’t quite have all the answers.

We harvested our first plum last week, a miracle we’d been waiting for for nearly six years. We’d walk through the orchard every evening to check on its progress as it slowly turned the color of a setting sun. Then one day the torrential rains came, and the plum was gone. Oh well, we lamented. Maybe next year.

We found it on the ground a day or two later, small but nearly ripe. Alan cut it in half for us both to share and I braced myself for a bitter bite. To my surprise, it was perfectly sweet. It wasn’t the harvest we had expected, but that’s what this year’s been for, no? To challenge our expectations? To remind us to be nimble? To be grateful for what we have?

The machinery of progress has crumbled, but maybe something new and appreciative has taken its place: the recognition that every day, every life, every moment is a gift. That a plum on the ground is just as sweet as one lovingly plucked from the tree. That even when things don’t work out as expected, somehow they still work out. 

That perhaps we need far less than we thought, and have so much more than we ever realized.