Legend: my ninety-one-year-old grandmother says that my dad was born under the cherry tree. Not exactly under the tree, but the house where she gave birth used to stand on that spot.
It was the early sixties. Selo. The hospital was a few kilometers away, there were no cars, and home births were nothing special. In any case, that child is a pensioner today, and his child is writing this text.
But let's go back to the scene.
Ever since my earliest memories, our yard has been marked by an old, large cherry tree. The house is long gone. All that remains is the place where it once stood, surrounded by a boxwood almost as old as the cherry tree.
The yard has changed over the years. The house was changing. Fences, paths, outbuildings were changed. But the boxwood and cherry remained, like two landmarks around which time revolved.
I spent a large part of my childhood under that tree. Mud lunches were cooked there, we hid there when we played hide and seek, we found shade there during hot days. And when spring came, white cherry blossoms would decorate our yard. At the end of May, the canopy would become our favorite destination.
Cherry, grandma repeats year after year, looks forward to the "summer Saint Nicholas". That holiday falls on May 22, although, judging by our cherry and grandma's theory, the date could be moved up to two weeks forward or backward. In some years, the fruits would turn red already in mid-May, in some years, only in early June. But for us, the real calendar was simpler: when the cherry ripens, the most beautiful part of spring begins.
Its fruits have never been as large and shiny as the ones we see today in markets and supermarkets. They weren't particularly sweet either. At least not by adult standards. But we didn't buy cherries. Our cherry was the only one we needed and that's why it was the sweetest.
My brother, the neighborhood kids, and I would hang out on the branches for hours, until our stomachs swelled. We ate cherries straight from the tree, without washing and without thinking much about what might be hidden among the leaves and fruits. We liked the almost black ones the most, overripe from the sun. Today, I know that some would be appalled by such a way of enjoying fruit, but at the time it did not occur to us. Cherries were eaten where they grew. I still eat the ones from that tree today.
There was also an unwritten competition: who would climb higher. There was always some branch that seemed to be the boundary between what was allowed and what was forbidden. We would climb until one of the elders noticed us and shouted for us to get down. Tall branches are fragile, they said. You can fall. You can break down.
That's exactly why they were the most attractive and it didn't happen that anyone fell.
The most fruits remained on them. First, we would clean everything we could from the ground. Then we would climb the fence. Then we would bend the branches we could reach. And only at the end did the real thing come - faith in the tree.
Despite all our persistence, the peak almost always remained undefended. The highest branches stretched towards the electricity wires strung between the poles. They seemed unattainable, as if they belonged to heaven.
Later I moved away. First because of studies, then because of work. For years it happened that I missed the cherry season. Exam deadlines, obligations - everything somehow coincided with the time when the tree bears fruit. I would come home and find only the stalks or the occasional forgotten cherry among the leaves high up on the tree.
Meanwhile, the cherry has its top cut off because of the power cables. A branch that had dried was also cut off. But it is still tall, with huge crowns, and it still stands as a witness to time and our lives. It still leaves, blooms and bears fruit every spring.
Maybe that's why I like it more than many other trees. We now have another, younger cherry tree in the yard behind the house. It bears large fruits, like those from the market. I even climbed it this year, but it's not the same feeling. It's sweeter, but it doesn't bring back childhood.
That cherry in front of the house is not just a tree. She is a kind of family tree. In its branches there are stories about the house that is no longer there, about grandmother's childbirth, about father's childhood, about our growing up, faith and scratched knees and hands.
And that's why these days I watch with special attention Mila, my seven-year-old niece, standing on the fence and trying to reach the nearest branches. Exactly the same as my brother and I used to do.
The cherry has grown old in the meantime. We are older too. She outlived some members of our family, but some things seem to continue to grow from generation to generation.
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