My tropical Star Trek memory

My father is a scientific man, but being a son of tropical islands, he is also a man of ritual. He fathered six children, and on the sprawling grounds of our home he planted a tree for each child. All the trees were fruit bearing – he made a point to give away as much as possible the sweet, fleshy issue to whomever asked for it, I think on the notion of charity begets fertility.

The trees my father planted were equatorial in nature, and as always in the tropics, their leaves were spectacularly green, so green they turn black in the shade. One tree in a particular – I think it was a rambutan tree – sprouted in such a way so that its trunk split inexplicably in two early in its growth. Through the years the tree seemed to favor the right side of the wide V, resulting in an abundance of branches, leaves and red fruit on one side.

To our young, fecund imagination, this odd, beloved tree looked a lot like the fantastic spaceship of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek.  In our daily game the heavy side of the tree became the bridge, and we would all climb up onto the tree and make believe we were officers on the Enterprise. I always role-played either the captain – borrowing my mother’s shower cap to simulate Picard’s barren crown – or Officer Worf the Klingon, and the rest of my siblings would play whomever else they chose. Why that game appealed to us escapes me.

this time tomorrow

I am not fearful, exactly, but I am suffering  its sibling infections – anxiety and doubt alight on me when I allow myself to think of the path I am choosing. But the act of choosing itself is a cure for this sickness. And courage is nothing more than fear suppressed.

There comes a point in your life where you realize that this is it – this is where you decide what your life would be.