June Under Cherry Trees

She has grown old, not the sort of old before you die old, but the mental old—not exactly the age that makes a person wise, but she’s acquired the age to be held accountable. There’s a PTO meeting, a county supervisors meeting, her son has little league, that huge project at work, her husband’s new promotion and increasing hours, there’s a church potluck next weekend, her son has tutoring on the weekends, and she and her husband have to squeeze in bi-weekly sex so they both feel like they are consummating their marriage. But, in reality, she sort of lays there, so sex isn’t entirely draining.

There are bills. So. Many. Bills. The envelopes with the clear panels pile up on the sleek granite countertops. Her fingers run down the chill surface, smooth as the waxy skin of an apple lying in a dish to her left. Sighing, she stares at the coffee pot, trying to remember the complaints she used to hear about the labors of matriarchy. To be honest, she was hopelessly bored.

Whenever she gets like this though, she remembers the June under the cherry tree. Summer humidity wrapping around her, how the breeze was there but it couldn’t contest the moisture in the air. How the thicket of grass beneath her bare feet were such a comfort. She was fifteen and her mother worried about her growing up too fast, but in these moments, she relieved the burdens of her early onset adulthood.

She recollected the ladder, a steel thing always leaning against the smooth bark of the trunk. Climbing to the top step, she’d mimic the howling dog down the road past the rickety tobacco barn to scare away the birds. Her arms would weave through the branches and clutch the fruit, feeling the area of the berry before dropping it into aging yellow Tupperware.

Giggling delightfully at the way the leaves tickled her ears, grumbling heartedly as she plucked shedding bark from her frizzy ringlets, those were the times she’d always find the strangest tranquil in. She’d climb to the highest rung, though the berries at the top were usually ravished by the pigeons, and just stare into the growing hay fields.

Sure, it was dangerous to be up so high on such a chintzy ladder. But she need not care in her own slice of paradise. Falling wasn’t the fear any longer, not enjoying life was.

Should she ever fall, the beautiful pillows of grass were beneath her.