"Oh, How the Great have Fallen"

When M, I and the kids moved in to our home 35 years ago, this time of year -- a week sooner or later -- a neighbor's Black Cherry Tree would be preparing to do its Spring thing. The first images of the heavy white clusters, splashed with pink, that would visit us as sure as the Hosta would be in bloom by the 1st day of July.

That ice storm that hit in the early stages of what the excitable meteorologists called Snowmageddon laid that tree down .... cracked it maybe two feet above the place where the just visible roots held the base. Odd, these excited meteorologists. Here, in Philly, we have a number of attractive young women and so folk who look a bit like the science types I may have taught 40 years ago .... and then, there's Glenn Hurricane Schwartz. Bow tie .... suit jacket ... moustached and not appearing particularly tall who says wonderfully precise things about fronts and gradients and rotations and seems to particularly come alive when it's time to batten down the hatches. It's "cute," "adorable," and "charming" how they bring Schwartz or some other guy out to say some complex stuff and then one of these young toned model types out to say it for the rest of us.

Can y'hear the rhythm? I find it hard to say that the Lovely Ole Cherry Tree was broken by the ice storm. We had another Cherry Tree ... but that one died years ago. Actually, there were two. Forty years borrowing a property from God, Anima Mundi and the Universe? and much happens. "Oh, how the great ... "

But, to the story. Yesterday, I began cleaning up. Our neighbor had cut the big stuff ... enough to patch the 16 foot hole in the fence. I was working on the fence and the trellis. In 1982 ore 1983, my sons and I built a pool and a 5 foot retaining wall around it to avoid the little mud-slides that happen in nature ... to keep the soil in place in the property that slopes down towards the house. We built some brick decks, as well. It was a hot Summer and the work was tough ... All in still in place.

Except .... the equipment from the pool that looked down from the hill. Ma and Pa Kettle. So, I built a trellis around the unsightly pots. 24 feet on one side ... 8 on the other ... with a half-swinging door that allowed one of GuntherDog's predecessors to race around the property. The door swung on top for people to pass. The bottom was open for Schreber. Oh, Schreber? Xenophobic Schreber who once he met you was good but until then ... a male Bernard who stood about 6'4" tall ... was a scary dude. I remember a scene. Schreber had gotten loose and a neighbor's cleaning person saw this behemoth running down the street; she assumed he was chasing her.

She ran ... Schreber was off at somewhere between a jog and a gallop. ... She cried out to her God .... Schreber had a big smile on his face ... Schreber was free!

So, back in the yard. The Ice weighed the tree. The tree snapped and broke the fence. The fence gave way for the the tree to finish off the trellis -- that I made.

I was sitting with someone who knows me reasonably well a few hours later. I was in atrial fibrillation ... likely, the result of the exertion related to this modest demolition and carting three 50 pound bags of sidewalk salt the 80 feet to the garage where they can hibernate till needed, again? I wasn't upset by my irregular heart ... it's an old friend, by now. Indeed, I don't often get upset but I was clearly sad. Was I sad because my heart has aged and no longer gives out regular signals in a sinus rhythm keeping my heart when at rest at a comfortable 40 beats per minute? It didn't seem likely.

Was I mourning the fall of the Cherry Tree? ... was it the loss of the trappings of memories of a time when I had two later adolescent sons indentured to me in house maintenance servitude? Did I miss them? their much younger sister who now has a 15 year old and two ten year old twins, herself? Was I suffering from a Hemmingway syndrome .... loss of function? Was I one of those listeners to commercials for Viagra and Cialis and Levitra that have many men hoping for the 4 hour erection that's supposed to get you to call your doctor? [I always wonder when the commercials will be rewritten: If you have an erection lasting more than 4 hours, immediately call your Doctor ... AND BRAG! ..... (jest jesting)]

I do miss the trellis ... I will build a new one and, I suppose, my heart will offer up its protestations. The trellis may last for another 30+ years but it, too, will someday fall.

"Oh, How the Great Fall."