In the early mornings, the sunrise hits the mountains and the valleys, and it falls on our house in rustling shadows through the avocado tree. The temporary bursts of sunlight through the leaves sometimes enter our windows, landing on us at breakfast, and the pile of dark purple avocados ripening on our kitchen table.
This year, the people have come by with the sunrise, drawn by the glut of heavy green fruit, hanging over our heads and over the fence, reaching almost to the street. This tree has stood here long before we did, holding its own space and standing in this community, and so we have given its fruit to all who have come to ask. People with old trucks and fruit pickers, who were clearly just driving around to pick off trees that were not their own. People who knocked softly and with desperate eyes, angry people who demanded more than we would give, and those whom I suspect have returned for more when we are not home.
After all of them have left, it is just us with the tree and its avocados. We cube them with salt, we make guacamole, we try avocado smoothies for the first time, and still the tree is laden with them, its branches bent to accommodate their weight. Sometimes in the coolness of the Hawaiian nights we hear a dull plop as one falls, having exhausted its life on the tree, ready to return to the ground. Only once did a fallen one grow. It fought through the leaf blanket, through the roots of flowers, and reached three feet high with eight leaves until it died; a lack of sun or dirt or a concession to its mother, six feet away and high above it.
And so, with just one tree, we sit the avocados on counters with our baby, and the Lincoln asks to pick them with Daddy and we add those to the middle of our table. And sometimes they spill over the side when a boy reaches up to grab them but can’t quite hold one in one hand. And sometimes they are loaded into toy trucks and piled in different boxes and dropped with a loud plunk, and no one mentions it. Because, even after giving a third to those who ask, and taking a load to church, and taking them around to our neighbors, there are still enough that we can see them whenever we look up, round green globes shining in the sun.
It is the excess that is astonishing, how just this tree alone could be more garden then we could handle. So much food without any effort on our part, as if our not working was just enough to get this gift. And here, in the shadow of the mountains, when the rain falls every day, it is our reminder that we live in such a land of excess. A land of sunshine all year round, of rain fall every day, and of avocados that have grown so abundantly that we cannot see the end of them.
We always thought we would like a garden, growing things in our own yard that we could watch and water and eat. But other things have taken its place; potty training and walking the dog and keeping up with family. And that decision not to make time, that decision to put other things above a garden, should logically have been the end of our own produce.
But somehow, not in this house. Somehow, in our lives where we struggle to keep our yard mowed, where we use big trash cans as a fence against the traffic, we have been given a gift of avocados; a gift of a tree that has stood for who knows how long, providing for the neighborhood.
And so its abundance has blessed our tables and our counters and our neighbors and our own personal opportunistic thieves. As if it did not have enough to do by staying rooted, branching out new leaves, and growing all its fruit, it stands to remind us that sometimes the best things in life come without any effort on our part at all.
Amy says
Beautiful! And now I’m craving guacamole. 🙂
dananicoleboyer@gmail.com says
Thank you! You should come over and get some. I’ll gladly share. 🙂