​Perseverance in a Pear Tree

When my parents bought their farm, a ragged and worn Bartlett pear tree stood in their yard. Busted limbs. Rot in the base of the trunk. It had given many pears over the years, but it appeared that it didn’t have much more to offer. My mother gave the tree five years to live.
 
The tree blossomed on, defying her prediction, and delivered bountiful pear crops every two to three years and somewhat sparser crops in the years in between. As a kid, I looked forward to each September when I would walk barefoot around the tree and pick the ripened fruit from the ground. It remains my favorite fruit.
 
As you can see from the photos taken a few weeks ago, some 55 years later, there’s not much left to the Bartlett tree. The trunk has almost completely rotted out. Two-thirds of the tree’s branches have come down in various storms over the years. Yet this year, with just a few of its branches remaining, the tree produced 600 pears! Just as it has for decades. Against the odds. Despite appearances.
 
I am in awe of this ravaged, relentless tree. This fall, especially, it stands as a symbol of perseverance. A tree shouldn’t be the impetus for creativity, yet it is. I am juggling many flaming torches this year, but I doggedly work to wedge in novel-writing time and hold that time and space as sacred. A picture of the tree in my office is my reminder to slog on.

Some day a great wind or unseasonably wet snow may come and knock over the tree’s remaining branches or its trunk may crumble under the weight of another season of fruit, but it won’t go down without a fight.
 
For all of us, in innumerable and varying ways, 2020 has been perhaps the most challenging of years. We’ve been tested. We’ve allowed ourselves to get sucked into negative banter from all sides of all issues. Yet if we can block out that noise, we'll notice that we’ve endured. We keep fighting on.
 
There are exactly seven weeks left to this strange and unusual year. If you decided to bloom right now—to sleep, to carve out time for creativity, to care for your creative soul throughout the holidays by making your creative projects your top priority—what could you produce? The Bartlett whispers, “I bet you can’t top 600.”

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