Figs

Figs
"The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower."
D. H. Lawrence

Donna has a friend, Karen, that she has known since her days at U.C. Santa Cruz. Sometime in the past Karen's dad married a lovely German woman and they lived not too far from us on a beautiful piece of property not far from us in Occidental. We visited them several times and they had a daughter together, probably 25 years younger than Karen- maybe twelve years old the last time I saw her. Karen's step mother loved gardening and I remember she was nursing several very small fig trees and gave us two. Just a year after our visit she died of cancer. And also one of the fig trees died. But the other one flourished in its little pot and eventually I planted it on the side of the house- espaliered. Three years ago it gave its first figs, maybe two or three. Last year we had maybe a dozen or more. This year probably 30 or 40 big beautiful figs. I check the tree every day. My greedy side relishes in the fact that neither Joey nor Donna like these brown jewels.

I will always associate this tree with this lovely woman. It brings to mind the mother of one of my students whose mother died in a car accident just one week ago. A drunk driver killed her and left her daughter in critical condition. He came back into class yesterday. I saw him walk in with his Dad back into the building. His dad's face show how distraught he was. He was in the class for the first ten minutes, then he got a permit to leave but left his journal open. The words I saw at the top of his journal were "My Mom". It is heart breaking.

Also as I walk to and home from school each day, our neighbors have about 7 fig trees planted. The brown ones are still not ripe at this time but green ones are slowly ripening. I count the days. Nevertheless the blackbirds provide competition. Often blackbirds divebomb what might seem a beautiful fig from below, leaving an open ant ridden middle. So it is me against the blackbirds.

Donna found a tree full of figs behind an empty house on Main Street. She says that she is not fond of the brown figs but loves the green ones. Last night after dark she asked me to accompany her on a fig gathering mission. We called ourselves, the fig thieves. We wore dark clothes, armed with a flashlight and empty fig basket. We walked to the house. To our surprise there was a small house in the back with the lights on and the front door open. I moved my flash light around the tree. "Fig alarms" - wind chimes covered the tree. Donna chickened out early.
I found myself pointing my flashlight up into the branches. Hard little figs peered out from the leaves and as I turned I hit an alarm. "clang, clang, clang, clang." I guess it's time for me to go too.