Earlier this summer I wrote about my excitement when my two twelve-year-old Pawpaw trees flowered and seemed ready to fruit, and then I wrote about my grief when one of the Pawpaw trees was cut down by the co-op’s hired gardeners. Well, recently, when Mom was examining the stump of the dead Pawpaw tree, where she had set up one of her experiments to encourage new growth, she happened to look two feet further along the retaining wall and saw what looked like Pawpaw leaves dangling over the side. She examined them closely, comparing the leaves to the healthy Pawpaw leaves on the surviving tree about fifty feet away, and they looked very much the same. How odd!
The possible Pawpaw leaves were hanging from two stand-alone stems, half green and half brown, and wobbly from very recent growth. We had not planted new Pawpaw seeds, or even noticed any random Pawpaw trees planting themselves under the mass of other trees and bushes in the retaining wall, but there they were, as tall as the two year old trees that we’d had shipped to us a few years ago (unsuccessfully). But it just seemed so unlikely, to me, that new Pawpaw trees could have planted themselves right there, without any help, and just when we really needed them.
Mom brought me outside to examine the leaves for myself, and even let me pick one of the leaves to bring over to the big Pawpaw tree to compare. But I still felt skeptical, because that’s my automatic response to most things. It can’t be true, especially if I want it to be true. Mom was, and is always, more trusting. She pointed out the unique quilting design on the leaves, unlike any other leaves nearby, and the shine on the baby leaves, which I’d seen many times myself when our Pawpaws came back to life each spring.
A few days later, Mom went back to the same spot, to make sure the Pawpaw plants were still there, and not just a mirage made out of grief, and she found another, much smaller, Pawpaw sapling, maybe just a few weeks old. And she kept going back, and searching more carefully, and finding more Pawpaws. I still wasn’t convinced though. It seemed too much like the universe looking out for me.
It never occurred to me that my trees would try to re-create themselves. I thought, actually, that Mom and I would put in endless years of effort for no real reward, because that’s how my life has always seemed to me. But I think I might be wrong this time. We still have new-growth devices on three branches of the existing Pawpaw tree, and the makeshift device on the Pawpaw stump, and if these previously hidden little trees are real Pawpaws, then we are on our way to having a Pawpaw forest in the yard to replace the one tree that was cut down by the gardeners. And we still have a Pawpaw tree coming next spring, as a peace offering form the gardening company.
The Papa Pawpaw
We’ll have to replant the saplings in different parts of the yard, where they will each have sunlight and space to spread out, to give them a real chance to survive. But it seems miraculous already, that they even exist. There’s a metaphor in all of this, or too many metaphors to count, but here’s hoping the hidden Pawpaws are a sign of good things to come in the next year.
Ellie’s ready for some gardening!
Cricket is already digging!
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
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