The Stinging

It was a hot, mid-summer's day in the Virginia atmosphere, when a different time was anew. I danced in the existence of carefree days and frolicked in tune with my grandmother's footsteps.

The sky was cloudless, and the sun shown brightly through the breeze. It encompassed the crab-apple tree that dwelled in the midst of my grandmother's back yard, like an unspoken aura. It was an aura of hope, beauty, light and admiration for the nature in which it surrounded.

I respected this tree, but then I had always respected her. For she possessed knowledge and life experience that I did not.

Whilst drawing closer to my old friend, I noticed the image of my foot falls permanently imbedded in the mud behind me. A wondrous sensation of nature's beauty captured my spirit and transposed it into the open air about me. I felt at one with nature, and did not think to ask as I reached up and stole a ripened crab-apple from the womb of the all-knowing tree that had been watching me grow up.

I knew of the tree's affection for me. Thus, I was not expecting her to punish me for my selfish crime, but she did none the less. She tasked a yellow angered and black hearted insect to sting my palm in the name of hostility and outrage. I could only stand and stare at my old friend in a trance of silence, as the apple fled from my grip and onto the ground below.

I came back into my own after the dented piece of fruit began sinking in the mud. I turned away from the tree with betrayal in my heart and retraced my foot prints in a hurried fashion. I stepped into my grandmother's house and closed the back door in an abrupt manner behind me.

I cried out for my grandmother, and she was quick to come to my aid. She saw that my hand had been tainted by the insect and the stream of Heaven's tears that were emerging from the windows of my own soul. She gave me a hug and told me that it would be "alright".

Then she turned away to reach for a pair of sterilized tweezers. I was in no less pain when she returned to remove the stinger, but I did feel better once the process was over.

My grandmother gave me a piece of fudge that she had just finished making and stepped away to continue engaging in her usually daily routine.

I, in a surprising frame of mind, decided to open the back door one more time. I stared at the tree through the screen that remained behind and wached intently as a beam of sunlight shown upon my freshly tended wound. I knew then that the tree had forgiven me, and I knew that I would need to ask permission before taking fruit from her woumb again.