Today was Saturday of Memorial Day weekend—a Memorial Day weekend like any other—opening day for the great American outdoor party of Summer. Millions of Americans all across the continent were flocking to beaches, firing up barbecues, playing softball or frisbee, boating, swimming, and engaging in countless other outdoor leisure activities for the first time since Fall.
None of his friends or family yet new of the death his marriage had already died. It would still be years before most found out. They were holding on to its outward trappings for the kids. He held some hope that it could be resurrected, but in some deep place where he seldom visited within his heart, he knew that the marriage had been totaled in the crash. So they went on, playing house, and little league, and soccer, with picnics and barbecues and parties and all the activities that make up a Norman Rockwell happiness.
Three other families had joined them in their back yard to swim and sun and relax and play and barbecue the day away. The hollow pop of ping pong balls against table and paddles, the sharp click of billiard balls crashing into each other, and the voices of kids playing, drifted from the open patio and game room beyond. More kids splashed and dove and swam and shouted and sputtered in the pool.
The dads sat on the deck under the grape arbor marveling quietly at the peaceful calm of early Summer stillness, and watching over the swimmers to ensure their safety. They talked a little, mostly about nothing at all, and sipped at their cool drinks, just happy not to have anything they needed to be doing; happy to be at leisure with their families intact and healthy and safe. For a while, when the time was right, they moved to the patio to barbecue the meats over hot coals and open flames, as was their responsibility and privilege as men.
The moms swam and sunned and sat in the shade of the mimosa tree and made salads in the kitchen and played with the dogs and played with the kids, and visited with the dads, and all the while, they talked. He had always marveled at how many words a woman has inside her. It was a wonderful thing and he somehow knew that a woman’s freedom to talk was the barometer of her heart. He loved to hear their talk and took comfort in it.
Late in the afternoon the meat was done and most everyone settled down to eat. A couple of kids were still in the pool, not yet hungry, and the dads were back in their chairs on the deck with plates full. The afternoon had grown hot, and most of the kids and all of the moms had moved into the cool of the house to eat. One of the dads commented on what a great back yard they had for barbecues. Another remarked about the still peacefulness of the afternoon.
Then, with a sharp force that froze the moment, there was an ear- splitting explosive crack. The dads were instantly upright, awash with adrenaline and scanning for the source of this assault against the peace. Now a tearing, splitting, ripping, creaking sound replaced the explosion as the southward fork of the old Monterey pine in the neighbor’s yard slowly leaned over and crashed ponderously through the fence, imbedding its huge shattering branches in the lawn between the pool and the patio. Not three seconds had passed before the dying giant lay still in the yard, 60 feet long and 40 feet wide. Half of the yard was beneath the sprawl of twisted and broken branches.
The dads scrambled to see if anyone had been caught under the tree and the others poured out of the house to see what the commotion was about. The pool was now empty, and a quick head count proved that the only casualties were the great pine itself, two feet of redwood fence shattered by its huge trunk, and a small apricot tree loaded with green fruit but now broken and lost. The kids, playing on that lawn only a little while before were all safe.
For a moment awe silenced the group and then chatter erupted and everyone was telling their own stories of the tree’s falling. The sprawling branches on the upward side were filled with youthful explorers. The dads surveyed the tangle of branches and trunk for potential dangers and the moms got out the cameras to record the event.
As the energy dissipated from the moment, he began to realize how fragile peace and safety and comfort really are. He was overwhelmed with gratitude that the tree had not sent them to the emergency room or the morgue. Their backyard barbecue could well have provided the evening news, and four families could have been tragically altered forever.
In the years that followed, he was always moved when he thought about the old pine tree, and how devastating it’s fall might have been. And it would be years before he realized what a powerful foreshadowing it was for the transitions to come in his own life.
Memorial Day weekend, 1996, Gilroy, California
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