The Shadow of the Apple Tree

What privileges am I made of, that I see not just the lime and emerald lawn, on this bright April day, but also the deep shadow of the apple tree, branching like the black waters of the Amazon? Or love my cats and watch when they sleep on their backs with folded paws, and twitch, dreaming? Or watch the vanishing ribbon shapes of the smoke, once the fragrant candle is extinguished?

These observations are not expensive, nor the products of a graduate degree, or specialized knowledge. They are unsophisticated. A whisker, a flame, a shadow: we've all seen them.

So why is it that in my life, made of these ordinary pleasures, noticing these incidental moments, I find sufficient value to be happy, to feel so content that I am free of anger, even in my position serving Help Save the Next Girl, knowing what has happened to Morgan Harrington, Alexis Murphy, Hannah Graham, Cara Holley, and Noah Thomas, knowing about shocking brutality and waste?

Why doesn't a storm of fury rise in me, so that I want to join other comments like the ones I've read this week, concerning little Noah's parents, who have just been arrested for neglect and abuse, with further charges possible after Noah's autopsy results?

"Bring 'em back to Pulaski! Let's reinstate public hangings!"

"I hope a lynching is in order."

And worse.

I am uninclined to fling such ideas. They do not occur to me. Why?

I just mowed the bright lawn. The first wild violets are blooming. I mow around them. They are beautiful, and it isn't hard to veer, to give them a chance to hold out their purple arms for as long as they can. I may be the only one who sees them, but I have seen them. I make a choice.

Next to my lawn, under the wild black walnut tree, a hyacinth with only few flowers on its stalk is blooming. I planted that hyacinth bulb in the Fall of 1986, when I was pregnant with my daughter. For me, the bulb's performance is spectacular. I feel kinship with something that is trying so hard to return.

Parents who have failed as parents are not like my violets and my old hyacinth. Murderers are not like anything in my garden. Murderers are the opposite of flowers. Violence is the opposite of growth. And fury does not grow. Fury is salt and acid, and it kills joy, when it isn't concentrated enough to kill children or young women.

I want as few ugly ingredients in this world as it's possible for there to be.

I don't want more anger, more violence, more fury.

I want less.

Justice is calm and strong like wood.

And Justice casts a shadow, shaped not unlike the shadow of the apple tree in my yard. The arms of Justice branch and reach and find violence and put it away.

And if the ones who commit horrors are sick, if they are sociopaths, or if they are addicts, which is a kind of sickness, and whether they are cruel intentionally or inadvertently in their sickness, Justice still knows how to place them.

I do not need to torture or hate or lynch a soul.

I need all the souls in my world, my friends, students, the leaves of grass in my lawn, the dandelions, the trees, the box turtle, cats, birds, deer and raccoons and possums and turkey and skunks and toads, even the occasional coyote, to be as free as I can help them all be.

It's a beautiful world.

Anyone can see that.

Except for violence, ignorance, slaughter, rape, abuse, hatred, betrayal, racism, misogyny, cultural arrogance, wastefulness, terrible illnesses, tragic fatal accidents and greedy environmentally devastating practices, it's a beautiful world.

Help Save the Next Girl knows about malice and death, skulls and matted hair.

We know well enough.

I try to consider what I add, what I want to add, what my words and even my observations add.

Everything I do, my thoughts and smallest actions, are ingredients. They are ingredients in my home, garden, community, and our world.

Not because I am righteous, or special, not because of some politics or subtle argument, not because of anything fancy or obscure, and not because I am passive, but instead because it seems so misguided to do otherwise, I try to add value. Not anger. Not ugliness.

What about you?

Jane Lillian Vance