The neighbors are planting palm trees. I look out my living room window and my eyes, sensing that something is amiss, wander over the lawn and down the slight slope on the winding drive and over across the street, and there, coddiwomple from the farthest south corner of our house I see our neighbors bending and digging and sweating and planting one, two, three lovely palm trees along the side of their house.
Coddiwomple is not a common term. It means generally to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination. The neighbors are working very hard, hosing and packing dirt and speaking to each other in their strange language. I do not know from where they come but I do know right at this very minute that the destination of those three lovely palm trees will be anything but vague. We live in Western New York where temperatures are known at times to dip to minus 20 degrees. Has no one told them? The end of those three palm trees will be swift, deadly, permanent.
The first year we lived in this house, I purchased 3 large, beautiful palm trees to have as house plants and during the summertime, to lug to the porch to sway gently in hot July breezes. I married someone from Puerto Rico and since I was raised with hardy pine trees, he planted six of them for me at the corners of our property. I in turn lugged palm trees out to the porch and remarked on their elegance and beauty. “We’ll see” murmured my husband.
In the end, all the lugging and watering and feeding was in vain. Coddiwomple. The palms were loathe to leave the breezes and the heated porch floor. They did not understand that when the land began to change and the air thinned and the leaves started to change from green to copper and pink and orange and red and eggplant, that they too would be required to change. They clung tenaciously to the edges of the white porch railings, stretching with outcurled fronds toward the remnants of August sun and I told them, “Look. It’s all deception, my friends. That brilliant orb, that great big sun up there, which scientists insist is one and the same as the sun hanging gently over the beaches of Puerto Rico, well, it is not. That sun will tease you and freeze you in a very few months. Now let go of the railings”.
I dutifully hauled them in from the porch. I did my best. I watered and nurtured them carefully and placed them in the sunniest space of the house, but they were not fooled by that wan sunlight, that weak watery white light which lingers for a very few hours each day in the dead of winter.
By February when every last drop of sunshine was as precious as gold and that which did manage to stream through the window for a few hours a day was uncommitted, the truth became evident. That winter sun’s only purpose was to create a sparkly, gaudy diamond display as it touched mounds of snow, blinding the lone neighbor walking along the ice covered sidewalks. It was not sunshine which nourished. It showed up mid mornings, crested over frozen pines and was soon gone.
In March, even though the calendar promised spring, the long suffering palms of summer, took one long last look at the warm kitchen and lit candles and then folded up their withering fronds, hung their heads and passed. They were dragged outside to the garden box by the shed and I spent quite some time brooming up the dried petals lying all over the kitchen and morning room floor.
I step back from the curtain and look at the ceiling and take a deep breath. I think about the neighbors working so hard out there in the hot sun. Has no one told them this may not be a good idea? I have seen this couple walking quietly around our streets and nodding politely to others when greeted with a cheery hello and a wave. I am not sure that they speak English but everyone makes an effort. Generally speaking, this is a happy and polite neighborhood, nothing too loud or off putting. People keep to themselves, occasionally crossing the street to tackle light conversation and then returning quietly home, closing their doors against intrusion and connection. But we do make an attempt, some sort of an effort to interact with neighbors.
Maybe they already know that the plants will not live long. Maybe they are homesick and for a few weeks want to feel that there is something out there growing in their yard which speaks comfort to them, reminding them of lost and old days far behind them, memories to encourage them now as they have journeyed to the land of pine trees and brick garden walls and polite and unconnected conversation and wan sunlight and snow, lots of snow.
Several weeks later we both look out the window down toward the lawn of the neighbors and see that the palm trees are gone. Instead, they are busy building a sturdy looking red brick wall which runs the length of the side of the house. It has two sides and appears to be some sort of a trough which may be used for planting lots of flowers next spring. Someone has spoken to them about the palm trees. Maybe not. Last Sunday evening, as the neighbor who lives behind us is walking her dog, I ask her about the wall. “I don’t know” she states simply. “I wanted to ask them where they got all those materials, but I don’t think they speak English. I wave to them occasionally and say ‘hello’ but they don’t speak to me or if they do, they repeat anything I say. The other evening when the power was out for a few hours, I asked him if he had any power and he said ‘power’. I tried using the word ‘electricity’ and he repeated that as well. We smiled and separated”. I said to her as she left with her dog, straining on the leash, “I thought maybe”.
In the evening I look back out the window and notice how fast the brick wall is coming along. They are hard working, industrious people, these neighbors of mine. That wall will survive the upcoming winter. I close the curtain and turn away.
690 Saint Paul 