| An Old Apple Tree
I was taught in a way of tales, song and verse, I continue this way for I know no other. So it is I share with you a story or two, as I was told and so lived all my life. This is one of me and one that saw the boy to manhood so long ago, I hope you enjoy it and it to brings to each that which they can take with them and be more for it.
An Old Apple Tree.
A young man to be sat on an old weathered stump, from which many years in the past had been an old apple tree. One that he had climbed on in his youth, ate the fruit from it’s branches in the fall. He had loved this old tree, but time and the elements had beaten it down, neglect had taken the last toll, when the young boy moved far to the south lands.
Here he sat though, returned to it, but alas the tree could not have waited for him, and only a stump remained. Just a small piece of the once elegant tree. As he sat there he was angered and wished to lash out at the world for letting something dear to him perish and be left in such decay. Oh he knew others had been close to it. He even thought they should have cared for it better, so he blamed these people. Also some of which were family and whom he cared deeply for, as he had so cared for the old Apple tree.
He could not see that the years had also made frail the ones close to this old tree. No longer were they young and spry and able to climb up and tend it. He did not see too, that events in their lives had come to past that had consumed their time, nor that their own health was in decay as well. Yes the young man had not been there to see the day it fell. Nor the tears that filled the old Polish immigrant’s eyes, the morn he found it toppled over upon the back green. He was not there when this man came to this country long ago, with only a few dollars and some seeds. He was not there to watch the man struggle and build his meager life upon the steep mountain sides of Pennsylvania. For the young man had missed much of this old man’s life as well, as he had also missed many years with the old tree.
Yes as I sat I thought how hard it was on me to lose an dear old friend that had filled my tummy with rich fruits. One that gave me shade to lie under in the summer and limbs to climb when I was just a boy. Where my mates had played into the warm fall nights in games of childhood delight. I did not think of the loss to the old man, whom had only this old tree and a weathered old house to mark his journey upon the land. I could not see, that he would never see another one reach to the sky and bear upon the back green once more. For the old man’s time was short as had been the Apple tree’s time too. It was hard to see how things other than the old tree could have come before it, but then I was young and the man was reaching the last winter of his life.
As I sat, the sun turning an amber mix as it set upon the mountain beyond, the old man came to sit with me. In silence we shared the stump of that old tree, side by side as we had shared it as we had done when it sprang to the sky. Oh my eyes were filled with mists and cloudy to see, as the old man reached out to hug me. For as his arms held me tight, I could feel his tears drop slowly on my head. For the old man missed that old tree almost as much as he had missed me!
We spent that night speaking of things that had come and gone. What lied ahead for the young one that would carry on. Of things that seemed so important to him in the past that meant nothing now, also of things I to thought important, but somehow forgot. In the future my importance will shift as my eyes open and my spirit lifts. As the night drew long and the morning came. I had learned that things of importance to one are not the same to all. That life is full of change and what is dear to one is just mundane to another. I also learned that night of love that had carried through the years, while I had been away, of how a simple old man had watched for me to return each and every day. Of how he fought for one more time, just to see man in me shine.. Yes that old man had sat by that old tree each and every day. To be were we had played and had our fun when I was so young. He had sat there upon the stump though the tree was gone, for he knew I would return before he was gone. In the days that came, so few they would seem, we shared things of old and new and those yet not seen. As I look back upon this time I know this great old man was as patience as the Apple Tree, for he to weathered time and the elements as long as he could, just to see me reach manhood.
Thoughts From the wellspring of my Life
StumpJumper  | 
12.22.2006
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