Clinging to my windshield, a small late autumn maple leaf: brilliant red and gold, wet with the recent rain and still pliable. I pick it up and carefully hand it to my father, who accepts it without words as if it were a priceless gift; a slight smile crosses his face. A moment that peels away years and revives memories of the same exchange that must have taken place between us many times before; a child, in silent wonder, gives a remarkable found object to his parent, sharing its beauty. And the parent accepts the gift.
I ask my dad if he recalls maple trees from his childhood in New Jersey. "Oh, yes," he says. "My father and I even planted one on our property, right before we moved." That would have been around 1942, I think, perhaps as Gene prepared to head back to Cal and his parents were moving to Brooklyn. Were they marking a transition in that father-son exchange? Establishing continuity? Or maybe they just decided to plant a tree....though it seems such a deliberate act, given the timing, one fraught with meaning.
For my father's 80th birthday, I gave him a dwarf Meyer lemon tree. He planted it in the small patio area of their townhouse. For whatever reason, the tree never thrived: it provided a few small, green lemons the first year but remained stunted, perhaps from neglect, and by the time they moved up north, I imagine it had died. A gift given too late, I guess, but one still filled with meaning....
