the avocado tree

I was eleven years old and life felt so sharp- as if it’s complications jutted out and sliced me open all over my body.

I was supposed to being doing my chores— feeding the chickens and washing the dishes— instead I’d stolen away a quiet moment in the hot California sun with some book about martyrs and missionaries. Dying for a cause was the only end I wanted; martyrdom beat suicide or cancer, though at that point I was contemplating death so often I likely would have welcomed it in any form.

“He speaks with a still, small voice” is what our teachers used to say in kid’s church. But this time, when God came to me, They didn’t speak at all. He did meet me there though, in the few minutes of quiet before my mom or Erin realized I was missing. I still remember the sun on my face and my wet, freshly washed hair dripping onto the trampoline and I remember the utter emptiness I felt, even though the world was alive and fragrant and moving all around me.

God is in the memory. A small moment of comfort. A gentle breeze dancing through the trampoline net, whispering “stay a while, isn’t this all so beautiful?” as I held in my hands a book of worthy deaths and in my head the memory of his life.

My mom called for me from the back porch. I was caught. I had to leave the trampoline and my book of martyrs and my sordid thoughts about a worthy death on the trampoline, where I’d pick them all up later— when the sunshine felt less abrasive, when the world felt less like a whirlpool, when I could stand on sturdy ground and reach for a ripe avocado without being sliced open.