by Sandy McPheron

Time is a river that carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."  Jorge Luis Borges

With so many time and labor-saving devices at my disposal, why is it taking me forever to get anything done? This issue of Tiny Lights took about six months longer than anticipated, with delays that never ceased to amaze and aggravate me.

I‘ve only just now figured out I‘ve been integrating some major life changes at about the same rate of speed as my ancestors who viewed fountain pens and flush toilets as miracles of technology. I might have made faster progress with only a broom and a washboard to distract me.

No shortcut yet exists to greater understanding, and with the blessings of hindsight I see I needed to grapple with every lesson and challenge the last year has handed me. It doesn't take a wise woman to know there are more lessons to come. But I apologize for making you wait for these prize-winning essays, full as they are of hard-won wisdom. Susan Bono, Editor December 2010

First Prize: $350

Connie Mygatt

Just Fifteen Minutes by Sandy McPheron

Istand on the deck of our new home in the mountains of Southern California, holding a brand new pair of pruning shears in one hand and a book on how to prune fruit trees in the other. It is a particularly warm sunny day, considering it is February. I stare out over our tiny orchard feeling completely overwhelmed.

Why have we bought this house? I didn‘t even remember that it had an orchard until we moved in. I had been going through electric shock therapy for crippling depression during the hunt for a house, so this place wasn‘t even in my memory bank. But here I am, there are the trees, and it is my job to do something about them.

This house is supposed to be part of the therapy for my new life. A new start: electric shock to ease the depression, new doctors to find fresh answers, new medications to rinse away the depression and anxiety from my fragile mind, and this new home. It‘s time to shed our old family home, a home filled with years of happy childrearing and what is now the sadness of our grown children‘s empty bedrooms. Time to shed a suburban neighborhood that has become increasingly hectic. This is an escape to a quiet mountain community of orchards and clean air, a place to heal.

My feet feel bolted to the deck. I am tempted to abandon the daunting task before me, crawl back into my depression and the comfort of my blanket on the sofa. I know depression; I know how to do depression. What do I know about fruit trees?

My dog, Callie, is having a grand time loping easily through the trees. Might as well check out the apple tree and let Callie play for a while. As I trudge across the lawn into the orchard, the smell of the grass wafts up and tickles my nose with the scent of . . . green. The sun warms my widebrimmed hat. A red-tailed hawk comes flapping out of a huge oak tree, startling me as it goes screeching out over the adjoining canyon.

Once beside the apple tree, I realize that it is considerably larger then I had anticipated. Oh God, I’m going to need a ladder. I look back toward the beckoning comfort of my home, but I want to be able to tell my husband, John, that I have done something constructive for the day. There have been so many days when all I could report was that I had gotten out of bed, and praise the skies if I had taken a shower. So I have decided that I will spend fifteen minutes pruning. Fifteen minutes; then I can say I have pruned without lying. I also want to be able to rack up one small victory over the depression. The monster has won too often for too long.

Five years. Doesn‘t sound like a long time in the grand scope of a middle-aged woman‘s life, but it seems like the darkness has been surrounding me forever. I have been caught in a riptide struggling desperately to reach the shore of sanity, but keep getting pulled farther and farther out, no matter how hard I swim. I‘m tired.

Memories of my happy life are still there but dance just out of my reach, just far enough away that I can‘t quite pull them in to replenish my current existence. I want my life filled once more with the explosive energy and sparkling light of the past, that sparkle of the years overflowing with raising happy kids, giggly sex with John, satisfying work for the community and a successful career.

The monster of depression seeks out those types of dreams, pounces on them, grinding them into dust. The harder I try to fight the terrible weight, the harder the depression leans on the millstone.

A bee buzzes my face, snapping me out of my ruminating. Better get the ladder. Leaning the pruning shears and book against the trunk of the tree, I walk to the tiny barn at the edge of the orchard, empty except for an assortment of dusty flowerpots, the ladder and an old papery hornet‘s nest. I pick up the ladder—damn it’s heavy— and clumsily crash it through the doorway, banging my shoulder.

Never did man see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the Soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.  Plotinus

Once at the tree, I battle to get the ladder open and level on the ground. I‘m starting to get frustrated, tired and hot. I hate this. I hate this stupid house and this stupid orchard. Tears start to prick the back of my eyes. Why can’t I do anything right? Why am I so stupid? Why is everything so hard? The monster crawls into my thoughts and begins to scratch around.

Fifteen minutes, I remind myself. Just fifteen minutes. I snatch up the pruning shears and gardening book angrily, determined to get the whole thing over as quickly as possible.

I climb the rungs of the ladder and take a seat at the top nestled among the bare limbs. I pause a minute to catch my breath. A trickle of sweat runs down my back. Glancing around, my eyes fall on the vista of the surrounding foothills. Normally brown under the heat of the California sun, they have become an undulating blanket of green, thanks to the winter rains. A canyon breeze springs to life, stroking and cooling my sweaty face. The tears behind my eyes evaporate. I touch the warm bark. Something familiar, something good, stirs inside me, but is quickly gone.

I turn back to the surrounding branches. Okay, here I go. I open the book to the general pruning information, look at the illustrations, then compare them to the branches in front of me. Turning to the pages on apple trees, I read about their specific needs.

The moment of truth. With shears in hand I pause. I‘m afraid. What if I completely screw this up and we end up with no apples?

Okay, do the thing that is the simplest to understand: cut away the deadwood first. I look at the branches around me. I begin to cut. Next come the branches that are rubbing against each other, also simple. I move from branch to branch, section to section. I finally glance at my watch. I have been outside for two hours. The dog is sprawled out in the sun having a nice nap. I climb off the ladder, smiling. A nap sounds good.

Over the coming weeks, I move from tree to tree, learning as I go. Snip here for apple, there for peach. I even talk to the trees when the neighbors aren‘t looking. I figure it can‘t hurt.

The pruning has to be done before the first bloom, so I am pressed by nature to get out to the orchard almost daily to get the job done. Depression prefers to keep its own schedule, so there is a fight between the orchard and the sofa, but finally the pruning is complete.

I wait apprehensively for the first spring blossoms, hoping I haven‘t hacked off all the fruiting wood the book talks about. Each morning I get my cup of tea and cautiously look through the picture window, hoping for something, anything.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. One morning I see something very tiny and white tucked in a groove of the pear tree. I stumble over the dog as I race out to look more closely. There it is: a beautiful miniature flower with a petite spot of pink in its center.

Overnight the orchard explodes. Each morning brings a mantle of new blooms on a different tree. First come the white flowers of the pear, next the pink of the peach trees, the cherries like cotton balls, and finally, my first friend, the apple, white and touched with red. Why does this bursting forth of life make me cry?

As the fruit begins to swell within each blossom, the petals fall like snow upon the ground. More and more often I find myself venturing out of the cocoon of my blanket, drawn like a proud mother to hover over the different developing fruit.

I marvel at the delicate fuzz on the baby peaches, each no bigger than the tip of my finger, the lime green of the tiny cherries with clusters the size of a silver dollar, pears blushing burgundy on green, working so hard to shape themselves, and my wonderful apples, dangling from their delicate stems by the dozens, perfect and round.

Damn, I‘m proud of myself, and for the first time in what seems like forever, I want to shout, ―Hey, look what I did!‖

The orchard changes daily as the fruit sucks up the sun and fresh air. The faint familiar feeling I experienced that first day I touched the bark begins to visit me more and more often. It feels good. I hold my breath, fearful it will slip away.

Have I found my old self among these trees? Am I blooming again, too? I‘m afraid to believe it, afraid that the depression will hear me. I‘m fearful that the monster will come thundering around the barn to bowl me over, sending me crawling back into the house, making me wonder why I‘ve been foolish enough to think I actually have control over my life again.

Harvest time. I race the birds, chasing them away from my ripe fruit. I pick as fast as I can. My kitchen counters are a tidal wave of produce. I stagger around under armloads of fruit, pressing it upon family, friends and neighbors.

I bake pies. My rail-thin frame, which had collapsed under the weight of the depression, begins to fill out. I become tan and grow stronger and stronger as I climb among the branches, picking the bounty.

This is not a fairy tale ending. Some days still find me laid low, my face turned away from the picture window, not wanting the orchard to see my failure that day.

But more and more days are filled with a desire to touch the blue of the sky and wink back at the glint of sunlight on a leaf.

As summer ends, the trees and I lean back against the rising autumn breezes with deep sighs of satisfaction in a job well done.

When my depression and anxiety began, it so muddled my mind I couldn‘t sort out what was most important. I couldn‘t figure out where to begin to find my way back.

Could it all have been as easy as starting with an apple tree and a new pair of pruning shears? Snip here for depression. Snip there for anxiety. Deadwood first.

Sandy McPheron lives with her husband and dog in the mountains of Southern California. In a long ago former life she was the director of a graphic design college, but is now happily retired from the 9-5 and working on a career in the crafting of words.