Childhood Memories: The Apple Tree and Passage of Time

I live on a farm in True with countless trees that never seemed to bend to nature’s harsh will. They remained straight and tall like attentive soldiers in an army. Among these stood what I considered to be the General of the military forest, the apple tree. It was the tallest and most stable of any of the trees, and I was certainly more attached to it than any other. But nature finally decided to have her way one night when I was just eight years old, and she chose to send the apple tree falling to its knees before her. Now I know that was when I first realized that even the strongest and most constant things in our childhood eventually crumble in the passage of time.Though I am hardly old enough yet to really understand the world and its secrets of time if it is even possible to know such things I can look back to what I had once considered home and assuredly know that I will never be able to return to it. Never again will I spend more time outside with nature than inside, feel my face squint and wince after eating what ended up being a rotten apple from the apple tree, or innocently chase herds of chikens around the chicken coop as they ran with annoyed grunts. And yet all of the adventures I faced undoubtedly shaped me into the person I am today and still linger in my memory. It is the only place I considered to be my real home.Some of the most memorable things about that old farm I live in were the obvious seasonal changes. Every season presented itself more clearly than the bright rainbows that would appear down the rolling hills of corn and beans after a dark storm had passed. Summers were filled with warmth during the day while locusts would sing their rich music, and the nights were illuminated by thousands of fireflies that I would catch in my palms and then open up to peek inside and allow the light to brighten my nose. Mighty storms would arrive unexpectedly and the possibility of thunderstorm made me sit outside on the roof of my dad’s shed in excitement. Then when nature’s excitement began to wear down, the leaves would fall and become the color of pumpkins, apples, and sunflowers to indicate the cool arrival of autumn. Though the blasts of color didn’t last long, they never ceased to amaze me. Winter suddenly scooped up the earth with its snowy breath, and I would dig tunnels into the drifts with my knitted mittens in shivering exploration, hoping to find the squirrels and rabbits that had disappeared with the colorful leaves from the months before. After the eventual misery of frozen toes and fingertips wore melted away, spring arrived and gave pleasantness back to the world with chirping birds and gentle rains. I still experience the same four seasons now, but when I compare them to my home today, I am unimpressed.As much as I loved nature, I almost equally loved the company of animals. There were all sorts of small and wild creatures, but I was also privileged to have the company of large and tamed ones, as well. Since my family lives on a farm, they decided to raise chickens, cows and horses for a family friend that had no place to keep his own. In those days, I remember the beauty of being able to speak with the horses without words. It was always a silent friendship that occasionally had its ups and downs like any other. An accident occurred when I was riding a horse bareback at the age of seven and I was bucked off of the horse before the upper half of my body landed on cement and the lower on hard dirt. I was unable to move for two days, but I still find myself gazing into a horse’s eyes in the hopes that it will do the same to me without having to go through the drama and heartache that humans cause just to feel loved. My home was a place for me to escape humanity and seek my own adventures in my twelve-acre expanse of land. Though I was always discovering something new about the plants, the animals, the sky, the bugs, and even the way the grass tickled my toes, it was also just as much about discovering myself. In a world that was once so quiet, there was always time for me to think. Now whenever I look up into the sky and see countless airplanes and the known that I’m almost an adult now, my heart sinks and I realize just how much I miss my childhood.