by Barbara Welton
The cherry plum
tree was the biggest and most climbable tree at home. Over the property, the tall eucalypts that had stood there for
decades still kept their guard over their patch of earth. But in the backyard, the cherry plum ruled
supreme. The cherry plum's age was
always easy to calculate. Dad had
planted it in the month that my older sister was born - so it was the same age
as Norma.
There were big age
gaps between children in my family, and I, the baby, had come into a household
where my siblings were practically all adults.
In a family of six, I grew up with the life of an only child. The house, the pets, the property and the
parents were all mine. The cherry plum
tree, along with the dog, was my best friend.
Its branches were sturdy and surprisingly smooth. It was shady and bore delicious fruit. Every childhood summer found me at home in
its arms, living on the cool, sweet flesh of its offspring.
The cherry plum
appeared to be almost as much my parents' pride as my sister, Norma, was. Like my sister, it was a constantly
beautiful being. Delicate white blossom
snowed over our backyard every springtime.
Each summer, there was cherry plum jam, stewed cherry plums, cherry plum
pie. Visitors always complimented Dad
on the beauty of his eldest daughter and his garden, the cherry plum being
singled out for special attention.
'Aye,' Dad would
reply dryly, 'And it's the same age as our Norma. Planted it same month she were born. Healthiest, loveliest tree on the land'.
The cherry plum,
for all its closeness to my family, was oblivious to the talk going on under it
one summer about an awful word called cancer.
The tree never drooped its head or sighed or cried at night or found
itself slamming doors over and over in anger.
The rest of us did.
The cherry plum
tree, like Norma, seemed totally undeserving of misfortune or heartache. Yet within a year of my sister's diagnosis,
the tree had a rotting disease. My
father, never a very demonstrative man, stormed into the kitchen one night in
tears, swearing.
'That shit of a tree,
that bloody cherry plum! There's wood
rot in its bloody trunk!'
The cherry plum
couldn't have understood the anger and hurt that drove my Dad as he hacked at
its lower branches with a handsaw. He
couldn't bring himself to throw the off-cuts on the incinerator, so my Mum
lugged the discarded limbs to their funeral pyre and burnt them.
Thanks to Dad's
radical surgery, the cherry plum tree still stands proudly and fruitfully in
the backyard at home. Visitors still
compliment it. Mum still makes jam.
My sister's radical
surgery, however, was not so successful.
The week we buried her, the white cherry plum blossoms came out early.