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.