cherry trees

 Sunday, June 17, 2007

cherry trees 

i went and sat in the backyard of my employer after work tonight with her, her friend, and her daughter.  she has a delightful backyard.  plants, flowers, high fence which makes it private.  the jasmine is in blossom, and the cherry tree is full of dangling cherries, yellow english cherries with a blush of red.  the music was playing softly, and conversation moving around.

cherry trees.  we were eating fruit salad, and cherries from the tree, and the conversation shifted around to childhood places.  i wound up talking quite a bit about where i come from, what my background is.  it is so rare that i talk that much to people all in one sitting, so very rare.  i am okay tonight, not triggered like i thought i may have become by telling so much information.  instead, i just feel as though i shared a part of my story, i shared a part of me.

cherry trees.  when i was a little girl around seven we lived in a house in a small village in a valley.  a river flowed through across the road, and the house was set halfway up a hill covered in a bush.  behind the bush, where the hill leveled out, there were farmers fields that stretched for miles and miles.  there was one house built up there which looked out across the valley.  it was an idyllic spot for childhood.

cherry trees.  i read a lot of books as a child, i constantly had my nose buried in one, and one of my most favourite spots to read was in the cherry tree in the front yard.  i read my way through the Katy Did books, through the Little Women series, through Around the World in 180 Days, Enid Blyton by the bushel full, Alice was a favourite friend, Jane Eyre, Daddy Long Legs, and Narnia.  All were my friends, and more.  Reading was such a good escape for me, and the tree brought me peace.

cherry trees.  i would sit in that tree all day.  i ate cherries, i read books, and i felt safe.  later when i was a teenager, i learned to separate myself from reality, a form of self hypnosis, and i recreated my cherry tree.  i lived in a horrible place that i hated, and cherry hill became a sanctuary of sorts.

cherry trees.  i had an entire world in my mind that i would go to, and all of it involved cherries.  i called it cherry hill.  and when things were looking bleak, i would rock myself there.  i climbed up a hill, and went to visit the cherry people who lived in little cherry houses with tiny windows with cherry curtains, and tiny cherry doors.  inside we drank cherry juice and we ate cherry pie and fresh cherries.  little cherry chairs, and little cherry tables.  and the cherry people didnt feel anything, they didnt cry, they didnt laugh, they just survived until the purple monster came and got them.  the purple monster was at the bottom of the hill, and it would come up with the cherry merry go round and would get all the cherry people.  sometimes the cherry people got away.  and so it was in my imaginary world.

cherry trees.  and it kept me safe.

cherry hill did not last for a very long time, by the time i was twenty i think it was all gone.  it was just a place i had inside my head for a few years, a place i could go to when i got overwhelmed in the real world.  cherry hill does not exist at all anymore in any place apart from my memory.  it was a very special place for me.

cherry trees.  and so tonight i sat underneath a cherry tree, and i told a lot of my story.  and it was okay.  that is the first english cherry tree i have seen, that i remember, since childhood.

cherry trees.

:)

lou