A friend offered to dig a hole for the apple tree I haven’t yet acquired but want to plant on this new-to-me property, and it was the nicest thing I’ve felt in a long while.
By “nicest,” I mean it moved me. It shook my heart in the best way, rattling loose some rusted parts I haven’t paid attention to.
I mean that it was a moment of complete trust and kindness and connection– a full body intimacy that didn’t fall into any Instagram-worthy category. It was all within. It was in the heartwood, in the rootball, in the soil and the interlacing roots of the trees that might have to be exposed and altered to put this sapling into her new home.
I mean that it meant something to me to hear that offer as this other person equally present to the beauty of an apple tree: the sweetness and the faith in a good future, a life worthy of waiting years to bear fruit. And it meant something that I felt no resistance, no fear that what I desired would disappear into someone else’s energy or be changed and bent and reshaped to someone else’s vision.
I think we envision the tree in different places, but it’s my tree and my land and his help, and there’s an intersection at the center of all of that, one with enough space, one with room to grow.