The giant peach tree and the one who sees it.

 In the centre, just before the low and sparse wire fence at the back of my grandmother’s house, stood a giant peach tree that produced too much fruit. I say too much, but what I mean is that it produced more fruit than the household could consume. As a result of this, at the height of every summer, the air was sometimes thick with the smell of rotting fruit lying bruised and sticky at the bottom of its trunk. My grandmother  would instruct us to pick the ripe fruit before it too fell to the ground, adding to the frenzy of fruit flies that were already feasting on the heap below. She, with painstaking patience and steadier hands, would scrape off the labels and wash old mayonnaise glass jars to preserve her bounty and later share these with family, visitors and strangers alike.

I stood in that same backyard the other day remembering those hot summer mornings when we would climb that tree as instructed. Inkukhu zika MaMpondo, the friendly pipe-smoking neighbour would flutter frantically in their coop which sat under the shade of the tree we were shaking and scaling for harvest. Our scraped limbs stung from the scratches we had borne from wriggling between the delicate branches from which the orange-coloured bulges hung. After the harvest, we would then need to do the more dreadful task of clearing the rotten fruit lying on the ground, which was sometimes crawling with worms.

In mostly hushed tones, the other adults in the family often complained that the tree was more of a nuisance than anything else. The old lady who loved the tree however, had neither the knees nor the back to pick the fruit or clear the rotten piles and so everyone, despite their feelings about the tree, could be tasked with those duties. It seemed, to me at least, that the other adults forgot the midweek and Sunday meals which came with delicious and elaborate peach desserts throughout the summer and well into autumn. They tried for years to convince her to cut down the tree with no success. So it stood there for much of my childhood and I cannot recall if it was eventually felled while she was still alive but too ill to protest or after her passing.

I wonder what her attachment to that tree was outside of the juicy and delicious fruit it produced. She had let go of all the other trees that had been planted on the other sides of the house over the years with little to no dispute. Also, while she loved fruit in all its forms, I do not remember her being particularly fond of peaches either. Knowing my grandmother though, that choice was not without reason. It could have been the glee on our faces as we picked the fruit or the sound of our laughter as we played under its shade, seeking refuge from the brutal summer sun. She often stalked us through the kitchen window that overlooked the backyard and smiled with a satisfied grin when we caught her gaze. It could also have just been the entire ecosystem, including the chickens in their coop, the birds who perched and fed on the tree or just the beauty of the tree in what was an otherwise dull-looking backyard.

Standing in this same but completely different backyard, I remembered the tree that gave abundantly but also made fitting demands. It knew its capacity to provide what is required of it and exceedingly more, but it also made no apologies for what that provision would cost the recipients of its benefits. It did not bother itself with the perceptions of those who had grown tired of its requirements or become indifferent to its presence. It simply stood where it had been planted and bore fruit, fiercely.

This is a story about a special old lady and her fruit tree but it is also a metaphor for what it is to be, to see and to be seen. It is not the work of the big tree to explain its necessity or justify its value. That is the work of the eyes of the one who is called to and takes the time to see.