The Crabapple Tree

An old poem...

You spoke to me again last night.
Tomorrow I'll be different.

I saw the crabapple tree echo itself over the mountains
as it will again tomorrow.

And what if I wasn't there alone?
Would it be even louder then,

or will I have to go on choosing?
And when I do choose you and I do it over and over again;

will the crabapples still be red?
And even if I am there alone?


I just got back from an estate sale. Its strange walking around the house of somebody who has passed away, shuffling through their collection of notecards and vast accumulation of hankercheifs. I bought a pair of old metal scissors for fifty cents. They remind me of a pair my mom used to have. I like having things that have been used. I like anything with a history or anything that reminds me of mine. This is a constant conflict for me. My heart broke when my grandma moved and sold everything, including an old four post bed that I worshipped. I spent hours of my childhood draped over it pretending I was a princess. My heart broke when my aunt and uncle sold the house where I spend endless days staring out the windows onto an irreplacable view of the Selkirk Mountains. I hoped that someday I could sit under the crabapple tree in the yard and share the beauty with someone who understood because it was too much for me. I'm still upset with my mom for selling my whole collection of fairy tales at a garage sale 15 years ago and she continues to give away anything that isn't nailed down to international students. I'm still grieving a bit that my parents moved from the house we were in for 10 years. It was incredibly hard to relinquish all my visions of curling up with my make-believe husband and kids in front of the fire while my dad trumpeted his way down the stairs. There is very little left of my past as far as place is concerned. Everyone has moved, the furniture has been sold, the views have changed, and I'm here. I'm so pathetically sentimental and I come from a world of people oddly unattached to the world around them. I feel like my past is constantly disintegerating behind me and I'm frantically trying to hold it together. While wandering from room to room at that estate sale I was thinking about what is real and what is now. There is a lot.