When you grow up in a big city, as I did until I was ten, you have no sense of what it is to have a back yard. Until I was ten, my family and I lived in an apartment in Chicago. Actually, that railroad apartment (as they were called then because they were long and narrow,) was larger than some people’s homes. Any way, when we moved out of the city and to a suburb, we got a yard with the house. The previous owners had been amateur gardeners and they had a vegetable space. My mother didn’t want to be bothered with growing vegetables. I guess she felt like she had her hands full raising three kids. The vegetable garden was turned into a patio, and we often had meals out on that patio throughout the summer.

One of my favorite things about that yard was a row of cherry trees that were planted just a few feet from the fence that divided our property with that of our next door neighbors. They also had a cherry tree in their yard. Their tree was a dwarf tree that looked almost like a bonsai. Our trees were just regular sour cherry trees. All the cherries were sour cherries.

Every year on the Fourth of July, we’d celebrate by picking the ripe cherries (provided the birds hadn’t eaten them first,) from all the trees. It became a ritual that continued every year while our neighbors lived in that house. They would help us pick the cherries from our trees and we’d help them pick theirs. Mrs. Butterworth had grown up in Maine. She came from a family of fabulous bakers so we’d take all those cherries and turn them into pies or jam, and we’d share these things together with our neighbors.

Our beloved trees are no longer there. After the Butterworth’s sold the house, another family moved in. When they decided they wanted to renovate and enlarge their house, they didn’t have enough space between the fence and their property to build this addition, so one day while my parents were away on a trip, these people tore down the fence so that they could appropriate another foot of property. In doing so, they moved the fence to a place where it was precariously close to the cherry trees. They never again bore fruit as they did throughout my childhood. They lost their luster and eventually, I guess they died. My mother planted Serviceberry trees there, but they aren’t the cherry trees we picked cherries from every Fourth of July. Whenever I go to visit my mother, I’m reminded of this everywhere I look, and I feel a great sense of sadness that something that was so wonderful can no longer be.