Or, The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Once upon a time there was a Grumpy Old Man.
Of course the story does not begin there, but this is not an ultimate origin story. In the background of this blog the presence of a Grumpy Old Man has been ever felt, demanding that we leave the house on time, that the gate is locked, and that the cats are in. There he was surveying his kingdom, stealing the remote control, eating others’ snacks, and announcin the latest scientific findings and political events that he had read about. There he was not, but only because he was out picking blueberries, potting Pawpaws, climbing over the obstacle course he built for himself along the walk to his office farther up the driveway.
There he was not. The fear of this has been present since the blog began, of a day when the safe comfortable background would lose its central, larger than life character. And why? Why do people have to die? Is it because of the fruit some naked people ate in some garden thousands of years ago? Because of another tree, in another garden? Or is it because of the tree in our own yard, the one we all thought was good? Even a horrible explanation appeals to the human heart, over the infinite terror of randomness, meaninglessness. And so I am hesitant to say, the Pawpaws killed him, the Pawpaws took away his beloved words, and then the balance he was so proud of, and then even the joys of stealing and eating my snacks.
But the Grumpy Old Man had Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. It is a rare neurological disease, a type Parkinsonism. When a rare and terrible thing happens, we want to know why, we want to know, why why why? But we don’t expect someone to hand us a scientific paper the next day, describing the very high rates of a very rare disease on a small island, among people who eat a fruit that is in the same genus as the Pawpaw. Or another paper, finding the levels of a neurotoxin in our own Pawpaws, Asimina triloba, to be just as high, and for it to detail just how thoroughly the substance, Annonacin, destroys neurons, those magical cells that together give us our movement, our memories, our minds.
This blog was conceived on the Eastern Shore, while teaching the trees among the clouds of Zebra Swallowtail butterflies hovering above the Pawpaw leaves. Those Pawpaws were wild, but I recognized them easily, the same as those grown from the sweat of the brow of the Grumpy Old Man. Who wasn’t even a little bit grumpy, and wasn’t even very old. But who loved plants, because after the war he went to boarding school and lived with a teacher who taught him to see the fruits and the seeds and the roots and the leaves. He made a life and a business out of plants, and the pawpaws that he grafted and grew became one of his beloved passion projects.
When someone told me that his Pawpaws could have killed him, I didn’t really believe it. We always want to find an answer, lay the blame, and in so doing make ourselves believe we have warded off yet more evil that comes without explanation. I still don’t know how likely it is that this is why he is gone, too soon. People get this disease who have never eaten from the Annonaceae family. But not so many. And how many have I eaten? How much has the rest of my family eaten? Are we safe, or are our brain cells already dying, marked, could a certain X Files mutant smell our imminent demise if we met on yet another new season? Will a small enough quantity limit our penance to just a season, through divine intervention, or the stories we tell ourselves? Is this a poison, like sadness, that will stay forever in my body? Sadness is not fat soluble, and I know that the jolliest and gentlest of Grumpy Men would not want it to leave our days darkened forever, our summers always duller colors. Is this disease already eating through the brain cells of those I love, is our precious time here, our days of not needing walkers and aides, of being able to talk, already numbered?
What knowledge of a tree might save us, and what knowledge will be the shadow that falls over us and never goes away? I am only a human, and raised in large part by a very curious and demanding one. He would want to know, if he was interested. But for him even the saddest of news brought no shade, his days remained sunny even while I followed him around the orchard leaving tears in his footsteps, hiding my face. I want to know, but he wanted to keep climbing cinderblocks and balancing on fences. Though he remembered war, invasion, narrow escapes, he was too interested in looking forward to spend much time looking back, or feeling sorry for himself even as all the things he was proudest of and bragged the most about, telling jokes, winning at ping pong, his quick reflexes, his fast healing times; were taken away. No, he did not ever turn into a pillar of salt. In some moments the world is more beautiful just thinking of how briefly we may be here. How can my spirit, can any spirit, ever hope to match that of the Grumpy Old Man?
Well. He left me with some seasons of transition. This summer was the first that he wasn’t able to pick blueberries with me, I went alone. The last few falls, after crying so much in the yard, I barely helped with the Pawpaw harvest, and could hardly stand to eat the Pawpaws. I still have the Blackhaw Viburnum that I found the Cecropia caterpillars on while he and I were taking a walk 3 summers ago. For the record, he always voted that I let every creeper I found go, free to scale its own fences and sail its own seas. Other people have been making his dishes, his perfectly roasted chicken, his crispy skinned duck, for a couple years. Last Christmas he and I ate oysters, per his tradition, and even I didn’t know at the time they came from the waters of my youth, from St Jerome’s Creek at my own beloved Point No Point. The cat who loved him follows me now. The leaves of the trees he planted made energy all summer to form the buds that he watched silently with me from inside the kitchen window as the weather turned cold. His own energy, always so big and abundant, was almost used up. Even without him, the leaves will emerge next spring. The birds are still outside the windows and the salamanders are underground, waiting to make their return to the pond, and I am glad that he knew this part of myself that I’ve only just begun discovering, the naturalist that I have been waiting my whole life to finally be. He read my blog, also, and he liked it. Well. It is a special thing to find a parent who is like you, and especially one who, despite having very particular taste, really likes you.
At first I didn’t wish the Pawpaws had never come into our lives, because he liked them so much. And even now the trees he planted have my love. But I’d stay away from the fruit, if I were you.
https://growingfruit.org/t/the-dangers-of-pawpaw-consumption/16536
everycreepingthing 