It is cold early and I am wearing three layers and a jacket, but soon there is a lightness in the air and the great white ice bowl of the sky opens spilling out pale yellow sunshine. On a back porch, there is a potted orange tree with three bright heavy oranges soaking up the sun.
It is the anniversary of my sister's death and I think of the beautiful twisted orange trees I once saw in a Japanese cemetery, the ground covered with ripened oranges filling the air with their sweet decaying scent.
I travel to the cemetery where we once took our children to feed the ducks and then I go to her old house and park in the driveway. I thought it would be only a rubble, but it was not. Someone who lives there now is keeping it up. The Red Tips she planted are nicely pruned and the winter grass grows over the place where the massive oak grew. That oak fell on the house during Hurricane Hugo and the roof was open to the sky for weeks. The squirrels were skittering around in the rafters.
I pass Akers Pharmacy where they bought the terrible medicine they had to take and then I go to the Lopez Bakery where I inhale the sweet and comforting aroma of the Conchas as big as cantaloupes. Concha Rosa, Concha Amerillia and Concha de Chocolate.
And later I buy two climbing ever blooming red rose bushes and a Brown Turkey Fig tree to plant.
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