First, Learn to Prune a Fruit Tree

My wife and I celebrated thirteen years together on Wednesday. Technically, it was our three-year wedding anniversary but I get into trouble when I say we’re celebrating three years and not thirteen years. It’s important to my wife to honor our full, thirteen years together and so I do. Thirteen years. Not three. Remember that.

We go out to dinner to celebrate — to eat a medium-rare ribeye and to try not to eat the potato tower that comes with the ribeye. I end up eating the entire potato tower that comes with the ribeye and it is crispy on each edge and falls off into my mouth in buttery flakes. Who can resist a potato tower? I defiantly cannot.

We start chatting with the guy who is bussing our table and we discover he has just ripened into the auspicious age of eighteen. Auspicious because somehow at eighteen, we are supposed to magically blossom into an adult human that can navigate the logistics of a paradoxical world. His name is Alfredo, by the way. He is tall and lanky with a full head of black curls and a small, diamond stud in his left ear. He is so lanky that his stomach curves in on itself as if it’s pretending to be the small of his back. As Alfredo is clearing our plates and I take a bite of the chocolate ganache dessert I ordered with pop rocks on the top, he asks,  “Do you guys have any life advice for me? I’m 18 and trying to make my way in the world.”

The first thing I think is, fuck. This 18-year old thinks we’re old enough to give him life advice? The second thing I think is, fuck. We’re probably old enough to give this 18-year old some life advice.

Then, I feel the pressure. I feel the pressure that is unique to an 18-year old in this world, in this country. The pressure that aches with performance and achievement and success. The pressure that tells us we have decisions to make and money to earn. The pressure that tells us we need to choose good paths and right paths and paths that pan out. I feel the pressure to know who we are and not waver from that knowing. The pressure that holds a tight whip to our heels and leaves blisters and welts as it snaps us to step into some kind of prescribed rhythm.

What I want to say but don’t — mostly because I can easily overwhelm an 18-year old man looking for some simple and solid life advice is this:

First, learn to prune a fruit tree. A peach tree if you can.

A peach tree because you only need one. You don’t need other pollinators around a peach tree — it can bloom and grow all on its own. If you only have room for one tree, make it a peach tree. Your peach tree can stand tall and alone in your driveway, in your backyard, in a corner by your mailbox. You don’t need acreage to have a peach tree. Learn to prune her, your peach tree, because she will give you fruit for many years.

There are two things a peach tree needs most of all: air and light. You want to grow peaches, not leaves. This part is very important. If you don’t prune your peach tree, your tree will flower and leaf but it will refuse to fruit. You want your peach tree to grow out into the shape of a strong “V” — like a flock of geese flying over a frozen lake. You want to encourage a mighty wingspan for your fruit tree, as if at any moment she will take flight. A peach tree cannot fly if there are branches growing upwards like beanstalks toward the middle of the tree. Mostly, you do not want central branches. Cut away all branches that reach straight up toward the sky. Cut away all the beanstalks so there will be no giants that descend down into your peach orchard.

*****

Alfredo holds our dinner plates in his right hand and puts his left hand in his pocket making him look like a curved, cement ramp we could ride a skateboard down. Slick and smooth. I can see black peach fuzz forming on his upper lip, something like a winter peach crop. Alfredo says, “My brother works here too. I’m trying to follow in his footsteps because he is on the right path. He’s keeping me in line.” My wife and I smile at Alfredo and his black peach fuzz — I squint my eyes as the sun hits the diamond in his ear and creates a kind of blinding rainbow. Many of the tourists around us in large, round sun hats are complaining about the strength of the sun. They are from Connecticut and Rhode Island — places where the sun hits weak and damp, even in the summer.

I think about lines and right paths. I think about how the straight branches that reach up toward the sky are not the right kind of branches for a peach tree. We want to cut those branches off the peach tree. They do not get to stay. Remember, we are creating a wingspan. Look for the geese flying over the frozen lake.

What I want to tell Alfredo is to hold on.
Clarity might be coming.
And clarity might be something like this:

I want to tell Alfredo that we bought a dairy cow without thinking and then another because our first cow was lonely. That we had never milked a cow before Rose stepped off the trailer and into our barnyard. That we had never watched a cow eat its own placenta before that night Laura ate hers, before she chewed her placenta like a tough jerky. I want to tell Alfredo that we knocked down an old bird aviary with an axe around Christmas because we couldn’t stand to look at it anymore and then built an unnecessary 300-square foot chicken coop in its place and painted, “Eat, Pray, Cluck” over the entrance. I want to tell him that we lost a calf and buried her in a hidden cemetery we found on our property — next to an old cow or maybe a horse grave. Either way, a large grave outlined with smooth stones. I want to tell him we hung a wind chime in the cemetery above our calf’s grave and every time it chimes, we know she’s talking to us. I want to tell him I have been fired from seven jobs and haven’t worked for anyone since I was 25. I want to tell him that it took three women, one co-signer and a dead grandfather in order for us to be able to buy a property. I want to tell him that one of our septic systems is not licensed or permitted. I want to tell him our cow drained our well and she doesn’t even have hands. I want to tell him that we have fire insurance in case everything burns down and we have to start all over. I want to tell him that I started out as a journalism major and then switched to a social work major because I thought that was how I could help people. I want to tell him that I still don’t know how to conjugate Spanish verbs in the imperfect tense. I want to tell him that girls like me are complicated and he better be sure he wants an answer to a question like this when he asks it.

I want to tell him that I learned how to prune a peach tree for the very first time when I was 39. I want to tell him, he’s not behind at all.

*****

When you prune a peach tree, be prepared that you might make it look like winter again when you’re actually hoping for spring. You might cut off so many branches that need to be pruned, leaving only one small branch that carries a small purse of pink petals on it. You leave that one branch because you can’t bare to cut all the pink off. Even though that one branch is serving no real purpose and most likely won’t fruit, you leave it. I want to tell him that life is often like this and not to worry. I want to tell him to remember about the air and light. Air and light.

You’ll watch a YouTube on how to prune a peach tree and pause it to takes notes on a yellow sticky pad where you’ll run out of room and wonder why you just didn’t use a normal sized piece of paper. I want to tell him you’ll have to rewatch the part where the guy making the video shows you how thick the branches need to be in order to grow peaches. One inch is plenty thick. I want to tell Alfredo that you’ll think your peach tree is about seven years old because you’ll count the rings on one of the branches when you cut it down with a small chainsaw. You’ll count seven rings. I want to tell him that you’ll have no idea if that’s how you know how old a tree is but you remember seeing it in a movie or maybe even reading it in a book.

*****

Before Alfredo brings our plates back to the kitchen, he asks, “Do you remember what you guys were doing when you were 18?” I look at his blue collared shirt tucked snugly into his skinny, black jeans. I think about how he says, “my pleasure” as he clears our plates, just like they taught him. I think about the employee parking lot and the green car with the tinted windows. I think that might be Alfredo’s car. He asks us if we remember being 18.

I remember.

I mean, my god Alfredo. How old do you think we are?

*****

I pack my blue, 240 Volvo with clean laundry and drive north on the freeway to Flagstaff. Broken windshield wipers and it’s snowing so that means my left arm is out the window, brushing snow off my windshield. Cold, heavy snow falling on my sleeve. I remember. Living on the 7th floor of a dormitory, right in front of the elevator, hearing each ding as the elevator opens onto my floor. Roommates with Katie Karinger who straightens her long, blonde hair out with an iron on the floor of our dorm. Skipping my first period swim class. I remember. I am a journalism major because I think I might like to write. But then I remember that my culture tells me I am good at helping others. And they are right, they just aren’t all the way right.

I remember, Alfredo.

*****

When you prune a peach tree, you want to prune it so it’s short — so you can reach the fruit just by standing in your bare feet, without a ladder. I want to tell Alfredo that if the shoots are over two feet long, you want to cut them so they don’t get too heavy with fruit. One inch thick is plenty thick. I want to tell him that you prune your peach tree for the following year. You have to plan ahead with your pruning. I want to tell him that you won’t get any peaches this year and that you should have pruned your fruit tree the day you moved onto your property but you didn’t. You didn’t because you had never pruned a fruit tree and didn’t know it needed done.

*****

I didn’t say any of this, of course, to the boy who was bussing our tables. He was thinking about straight lines and I knew I had to let him.

*****

I mostly want to tell Alfredo that I am sorry. I want to tell him I am sorry we don’t live in a culture where people help him become. I want to tell him that it’s weird we learn to go to the gym instead of learning to shovel manure. That all our physical labor that could go into farming is going toward useless machines. I want to tell him that they took our bodies from us like they parceled the land — that he looks like he could have a strong body and that we could use his help — that we have dead branches from the peach tree that need hauling to the burn pile even though there is a burn ban.

I want to tell him that you hope your peach tree will eventually fruit but you don’t know if it will. You have to wait until next year to see. You have to wait a whole other year. Neighbors can stop by and tell you you’ve done a good job pruning, that the tree needed it, but you won’t know for sure until next summer. You won’t know until you feel the warm, soft sticky juice of a peach run down your forearms. And then you’ll know that you pruned her right, you pruned her good. I want to tell him that sometimes it takes a long time to know.