Mama Poma

Here is a seasonally timely excerpt from a larger project I am working on--an autobiographical account of a girl raised by fruit trees and kindly strangers. Enjoy :-)

As a little girl I admired her out my bedroom window. She sat closest to the house. Sometimes I thought she might be watching me. Other times she would put on a show of her own. First, the vibrant coral red blossoms, thick armor with frilly yellow crowns make their explosive appearance. They weather and swell through the late summer to make the early pale fruits, then we watch… and wait until the skin darkened… then reddened like an old blood stain, turning black at the seams. The best were the ones that had just split open—maybe a nip or two of blessing from a quick fruit bird. I would make a round of the tree each afternoon in the Hallows season.

Mom had planted the pomagranate tree in the early seventies with the citrus and apricot. My earliest memories were of her ‘peeling’ fruit after fruit and storing the juicy bits in tupperware for me to eat with a spoon. When she wasn’t looking I would run my hands through the faceted, deep red tart nibbles… nature’s gems. I was ever the pirate, arghh! As kids we were forbidden to pull the fruit and peel it ourselves. Of course, we did this from time to time; always betrayed by the magenta flecks on our clothes. After Mom left, the tree grew wild for a few years, producing declining harvest each year.

Somewhere in my adolescence I felt it was a good use of my time to tame and revivify the thorny bitch of a tree-bush-goblin. Perhaps I thought she would grow in through my bedroom window when I wasn’t watching. Throughout my teenage years and afterward I kept up with the tree’s needs and the harvest grew yearly in flavor and quantity. Every other year or so, she’d show that big ugly side—an overgrown thorny long-armed goblin stabbing at clothes and hair as people walk by. After a few bloodlettings, I would tackle the thorny mayhem. My clothes were no match for the wicked branches. One reach, a little too carelessly, punctuated by a mini bayonet poke, then two, three, many more as I try to extract my arm; my battle displayed by blood-flecked clothes. Over the years, I acquired leather gloves and long-armed pruning sheers—still, a certain amount of carnage was inevitable. My wicked goblin and I parted ways when I moved out to the east coast.

I returned to the west a few years later; I was thoroughly heartbroken and in a disillusioned, frustrated professional lull. The overgrown thorny old hag was producing a meager harvest, mostly suffering from neglect and drought. I was too weak to lift a hand towards it and reluctant to spill my precious blood and sweat. I quickly moved on to San Francisco where there was a chance for me to tame and revivify my own thorny bitch of a self. Yearly at Hallows and Candlemas, I returned south. I always made a point to visit my old haggard friend. One year, I returned to find her spindly eight-foot magnificence had been hacked up to a few bare branches four-foot high. I gasped and grieved in my heart for my friend. I asked my father, the kindly butcher, what had happened.

“It got big and wild, poking me—for god’s sake, it was drawing my blood!”, he ranted angrily. I can’t begrudge him, but I am sad and he sees it.

Throughout my years up north, I’d visit Mama Poma, as I grew to call her. With time, and a little water from dad, a strong tree with young supple branches grew back from the array of sticks he had left. Meanwhile, I had sprouted somewhere within myself those same vibrant coral red blossoms… thick armor with frilly yellow crowns shining like the sun.

Excited to someday bear my sweet tart crimson fruit, I returned to rejoice with Mama Poma. She was gone—a bare place amongst piles of construction material for a recent remodel. My father explained apologetically, she had taken too many people’s blood this time and the work crew took her out. Unceremoniously as that, it was her time to go. She had been a good Mama to me; disciplined me, taught me to give love and care, but most importantly she showed me when and how I needed to keep that love for myself.

The Second Spring

I find that I really enjoy this time of year here in the valley. It is like a second spring before the year slips into a multi-month marathon of dismal wetness. Rose blooms that withered and paled in the August heat--recuperated through September for the last gasp of vibrance here in mid October. The first flower stalks begin to poke out around the bases of all my orchids... sensing the familiar disparity between daytime warmth and nighttime chill. They will take months to mature and bless us through to Imbolc with exotic beauty. Our first real rain is on the way and most of the summer fruit and seed is harvested from the fields. All that remains is the pomegranate harvest that will crack open for the birds at Hallows. I reach for the blanket indoors and the sweater outdoors. Still, the sunny days are more than the grey.

This last gasp of life so well timed before Samhain--it pulls me through and onwards from the swallowing inertia of a dying year. A year of deaths... of the flesh... of the heart.

Deaths are not bad in and of themselves. Worse than any death is the dream that never lived. I have lost much this year, but I have also gained. My heart is full.

Narcotics and Gingerale—mid-Ramadan update

My Ramadan was interrupted by surgery. Sure it was a scheduled surgery, but an interruption just the same. I’m not back to fasting yet. At this point it looks like I will swing the first week and last week of fasting with weeks off in the middle for surgery and menstruation respectively. If I were an observant Muslim, I’d have to make up those days of fasting before next Ramadan, I suppose. We’ll see about that and how it plays into the founding of this new hybrid observance. The good news is that amidst this freeform, perioperative Witch Ramadan, I am achieving the clarity I was seeking. Time alone and quiet (after the narcotic haze had cleared) has been invaluable. What a luxury is a simple life!

I am healing from surgery as I do... quite vigorously and well. The doc says I'm good to go and I'm off and running again!