Many months ago I mused about my love for pomegranates. I wrote: “…And if you know me, I’ve tumbled across many a punica granatum. I hunt them out. I track them down. And I sit, and admire the red fruit from the car; it’s the thing that most tempts me toward thievery.”
So, wouldn’t you know, that very thing–thievery–has come to strike my own tree, my own yard… Thieves have been about, and I’m not happy. Though I have thought about taking someone else’s fruit–yes, thought… I have never actually reached out and plucked.
But the story gets more sad and dreadful. Our beloved pomegranate tree is dying a slow but, it seems, inevitable death…
My husband and I have been using all our horticultural intellect to try to figure out the cause of this sad happening… The pomegranate tree (my favorite of all childhood fruits) a tree that was a birthday present many years ago from my parents–is just about at the branch-brittle stage. All summer we’ve watched our tree turn from green and lush
to weak and woeful…
Throughout this slow process of dying, the tree somehow managed to keep on its limbs about six pomegranates. We’ve picked one off a branch that was obviously dead, and were just about to pick two very round and gorgeous fruit that had fully ripened, but…
We returned from a long afternoon away, and the fruit was gone.
What sadness! Not only for the loss of the fruit, maybe the last fruit we would pick from that beloved tree, but sadness for the person who reached high into the branches, snitched the fruit, and tiptoed away.
What I’d really like to do is bake a nice loaf of sourdough for this person… They must need a friendly neighbor, a little dose of love, and I’d like to be someone who reaches out… Last Sunday in church, our pastor exhorted us to keep a peaceful heart–to hold captive any thoughts that enter your mind that might disturb the peace we so desperately need. “Hold those thoughts captive, and reject them!” I don’t want to think unhappy thoughts about you, my thief… So, if you swiped my pomegranates, and are reading this, leave a note on my porch, designate a time and place for the bread drop off, and I’ll bake for you.
Really. I will.
The Woman and the Wheat 