On August 23, the cedar waxwings came to eat the pin cherries.
I’d been waiting for them since it became apparent that this was going to be a mast year for cherries and berries and acorns and apples. The Cortland tree in my yard, which has been a solo traveler since the Honeycrisp succumed to voles, is covered with apples despite my negligence in finding a bouquet of blossoms to place at its trunk in hopes of cross-pollination. My pear tree has pulled off a similar feat. The downtown sour cherry looked like an illustration, and my friend invited me over to pick gallons from her own tree, some of which I turned into a slab pie.
The pin cherries are for the birds, not for the people, although the small, translucent, fiery red fruits are edible. Given the abundance of cultivated fruit, I haven’t felt the urge to sample them. Instead, I hoped that they would act as a lure for the cedar waxwings.
Portrait of the author and a pin cherry tree
The last time we had a mast year like this that I can remember was twelve years ago. I was nursing my daughter constantly, incessantly. She would have been four months old in August, a slab of a baby, a “happy spitter,” so-called by her pediatrician due to her habit of nursing and spitting up and nursing and spitting up. It felt Sisyphean, keeping her fed, but she was pretty jolly and slept decently (until September, when she stopped sleeping almost entirely) and was certainly gaining weight.
I remember nursing her under the living room windows, and suddenly noticing a lot of commotion in the pin cherry tree. Cherries had been on my mind; I had gotten permission to harvest from the downtown tree and had, of course, made a slab pie. This commotion came in the form of beautiful burglars: sleek, soft-looking birds with black masks, their feathers tracing a subtle gradient from yellow to gray. I recognized them, although I don’t know that I had seen them in person before. Charismatic mini-fauna—I was enchanted. The more I learned about them, the more enthusiastic I became. Cedar waxwings are highly social, they help each other to find food. Within a flock, they’re noncompetitive and seemingly kind. And so beautiful.
So I had been keeping my eye out for them this year. Coincidentally, or not, I am also spending a lot of time lying about under the living room windows at the moment, or in my bedroom, which has a tree-top view. This round of chemo, five out of six, has been tough. I experienced breakthrough nausea for the first time, other unpleasant and undignified GI symptoms, general malaise. I stayed upstairs for two days.
This did mean that I had my eye on the pin cherry tree. And so I noticed the shaking of the branches, more than would be caused by a chickadee or a sparrow, and the gathering of the beautiful birds, drawn by the fruit. The cherries have been on the tree for months; they must be almost fermented by now, and I can imagine the smell would be irresistible to a flock of birds.
I slid cautiously out of bed and walked to the dresser under the window, gripping it for support. “You came,” I said out loud, too overcome to feel self conscious. “Thank you.” Tears came to my eyes.
They set to work stripping the clusters of fruit, coming in groups of up to four birds. Their arrival mirrored an extraordinary chain of support that my friends put together for me during my recovery week this time, to insure that I was almost never alone in case I should become febrile again or need fluids, or any unpredictable and unwanted circumstance. In some cases, my caregivers changed on the hour; some were able to stay overnight, bringing food or drinks or gossip, willing to watch a little Star Trek with me or try to complete the remaining all-white pieces of a beautiful and maddening John Derian puzzle. My blood pressure was checked and documented dozens of times, fluid intake sternly monitored. Cats were fed, laundry folded, lizards tended to. I was taken on a careful walk through the vegetable garden to pick tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, and blackberries and tuck them away for when I am ready to eat them.
As I, like Prometheus, like a werewolf, like a woman, have my innate structures broken down and repaired this time, and then the next, and then we will move on to other things, I am alone in the experience of my body. But many are walking with me, holding me upright, keeping the small business of life moving around me, and out the window, there are cedar waxwings.
Beautiful!!