The funny thing about loss.

My back yard has a massive fig tree. It dominates the entire space, but it makes it, too. It’s shady and cool in the summer, private and quiet.

The day the realtor walked us through, he said with authority that it’d have to be cut back. Defensively, I disagreed. It kept the back of the house cooler in the summer, like someone shielding their eyes from the sun with a forearm. I felt like I needed it, and didn’t want it taken from me.

Over the years, I’ve watched it double in size, spreading its veins across the space below the sky. I marveled at its impressive growth while at the same time, beat back its spread—at least, any spread within reach of my 5’5″ frame. Like keeping it in check.

Its ability to grow is matched only by its ability to lose.

“Does it bear fruit?” asks every new visitor to my postage stamp of a yard. “It does,” I reply.

For every year in the late summer months, fat, sugary, sticky figs rain down for weeks. I absolutely hate them. A hatred matched only by that of my hatred for the birds. Hundreds of them come from everywhere and wage war on the tree, screeching from sun up to sunset, dropping open, picked-apart figs (and shit) onto the deck. Then, the bugs. It’s like Nam back there.

Come fall, the leaves make the deck disappear. I can rake it up to three times a day. Which means that for one season a year, I live in the shadow of its generosity. For the other three, I clean up after it. Once the last leaf has fallen, I look up into its naked branches and ask for more.

Its loss is bountiful. Bountiful loss. Giving. Losing. You can’t separate the two.

I take inventory of its loss.

I think about that a lot.

-C.

[Deets for the cheap seats: The English Factory Art Lace Dress (really more of a shirt, fyi) + Rag & Bone jeans in Surf + Sigerson Morrison booties.]