I’m sad for what I won’t experience. I can imagine walking out the front door, leaving the shade of the porch and feeling the powerful sun immerse me in its warm, like i’m getting into a hot tub without the wet feeling. Maybe all these things i will miss are things i already miss from the idealized summers in south georgia. Before i knew to be annoyed by mosquitos or humidity or melted by the heat. Perhaps im remembering those sweet days and forgetting the truth, but my memories feel true. The feelings of invincibility and fear when climbing a tree that went higher than the house next to it. Looking up and seeing the routes i could take up and up and up to the tallest swaying branches, then looking down and realizing how far I was already from safety. That gut clench as a hold or foot slipped, clinging with my baby cheek to the trunk of a tree that felt as wide as the earth. I think of those velvety glossy leaves hiding me from the sun’s sight. I’m brought across the street to my own pecan studded front yard. Those leaves were thin and long like green fingers that gave and gave. My mother’s hands. Thin and dainty, with some wrinkles and a continual glint of the single diamond on a gold band. Hands that gave and whose gifts hurt often but occasionally held surprises. The nutty pecans i would unpeel layer by layer with my indelicate fingers. Lessons and nurturing, perhaps not worth the work, but appreciated nonetheless on occasion. Worth the rare experience, remembered now years later when the pecan tree and my mother are dead.
