The Catalba Tree - The Bean Tree

My grandmother had a catalba tree behind her house, near the back door. I always called it the bean tree, and didn't actually know it's name until I re-read Prodigal Summer by Barabra Kingslover this month.

It stands in my memory as the shade and respite from the hot days that often speckled upstate New York (Amsterdam) summers. Under it we snapped beans for freezing, pealed cucumbers for pickles, pealed corn for supper, played aggravation to alleviate the boredom, or simply collapsed on our backs after hard play for rest and coolness. My mind would drift around its rugged bark, up to its hanging bean pods, through its huge heart shaped leaves, to the filtered blue of the sky; not thinking about anything except the intimate details of that tree. Subconsciously the surrounding smells of cut grass, ripened petunias, old wood, freshly turned dirt, roses, imprinted on my mind. The sounds of bees in clover, flies buzzing, a lone car whirring around the curve, the pressure cooker from the open kitchen window, became permanently recorded in my inner senses. When I smell those things, when I hear those sounds, I am once again 11 years old laying under that bean tree dreaming, drifting, feeling, simply just being.

Oh to return to that house, that tree, to those simple summer days when simply just being was just fine.