Perfect
by Tom Conoboy
Posted: March 22, 2006
She’s in the distance, quiet, unassuming,
a beauty, ripe and calm and fresh. Livid purple skin, gleaming in
the autumn sun. One stretch away, one tug, one twist, one grip,
one grasp. And she’s mine. The softest, roundest, darkest
plum in the whole tree.
It always means a lot to me to get the best one. It’s a subjective
thing, of course, but subjective notions can still be right. Only
I know which is the best, and I know early on, from August, even
July, just by looking at the buds, at their shape and distribution,
at their shade from the leaves, proximity to the branches, to water,
to feed. It is a mathematical puzzle played out in nature, calling
for the elimination of every option, one by one, until I’m
left with a single fruit, the fulcrum, the perfect specimen.
My plum.
The year of the winds was traumatic. 1987. I still shiver. I was
twelve, just learning my craft, learning to discern the perfect
from the fine, the fine from the good, the good from the ordinary.
I bought a ladder with money from my paper round and I climbed my
tree every afternoon, settled on a different bough and studied its
branches. From the ground trees look the same, just a mass of green
and brown and rustling and noise. You don’t know what you’re
missing.
Go up in a tree one day. I promise you, you won’t regret
it. Sit in the shade and study, study its toothy leaves, its black
bark, its little thorns, those darlings waiting to catch you. Sit
and breathe, smell its life, smell the freshness of the world in
motion, because only when something moves as slowly as a tree can
you truly catch the moment.
I lost my perfect in 1987. The storm. The night, nightmare. I watched
from the window, watched my tree swoon and sway and stretch, creaking
and straining like it was trying to break free from its roots. Hundreds
of trees were lost that night. Mine remained.
But none of its fruit.
They were all on the ground the next morning, battered and bruised,
bewildered by the suddenness of their ejection. I had no way of
telling which was mine, now that it was sundered and sullied, made
ordinary like the rest. I cried for the rest of the day.
I had two more summers with that tree, two more summers at The
Lawns and they were the best of my life. I was connected, rooted,
I felt I had a purpose as long as the tree held its fruit. I felt
close to beauty.
I was moved to a different home in 1990, in Swindon, in a housing
estate with only a few scabby larches on the pavements. I asked
if there were any plum trees, any fruit trees of any sort, but my
foster parents looked at me blankly, already regretting their choice.
For three years in Swindon I didn’t seed, didn’t flower,
didn’t bloom, didn’t grow. Three years of stagnation,
waiting for my plums to ripen again. I know what’s perfect,
you see.
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