My Lemon Tree's Last Hurrah

jewey

Dec 26

"Raven," I said, sighing. "Do you really wanna buy a plastic tree?"

This year, Raven wanted a "proper" tree. Like the ones she saw at Kmart or at the shop window displays with their pretty reds and blues glowing around fairy lights. We managed to do without for the last seven years and there was no way I was going to start this year. (Although I was this close to buying a real tree.)

I guess I just really wanted to stick to our little tradition. The one where we make our own tree and appreciate its beauty because that was us creating something special out of dried twigs and branches before returning them back to nature for their final biodegradable death.

I had my eyes set on the plum tree branches in the backyard. Jeff said no. He wanted to use the bits of the pine tree he had chopped off. Raven said no because it wasn't the perfect shape. My mom, who said nothing at all, one day announced that she had already found our tree.

The said tree used to be my lemon tree. The one I planted in a big pot with my big hopes that one day she will give me big juicy lemons. The one whose branches I thought were growing big and strong, like Popeye's muscles.

Only, apparently, they were wasps. My whole entire tree was infected with bloody insects that lay eggs in the barks of young stems, the larvae disrupting water and nutrient flow.

So I did what any green thumb like me does best naturally: I killed it with neglect. It was beyond saving anyway.

But perhaps my lemon tree wasn't meant to be a lemon tree at all.

Perhaps its whole life it identified as a Christmas tree, you know what I mean?

So this is my lemon tree's last hurrah. A collaboration between Raven and my mom. My mom with her nifty DIY flower decorations, and Raven supplying the rest with baubles.

I look at that tree now and I see two generations working together to make it happen over the course of two weeks, a story filled with boba breaks and kitty breaks and what-not.

"Bruh, where's your partner, bruh?" I asked Raven when I noticed that she was the only one left tinkering with the tree.

"I don't know, bruh," she replied. "She's busy cooking, bruh!"

They call each other "bruh" now.