Today I took my fifth trip to Cherry Blossom Land. I’m determined to see them through their annual journey from fresh-faced babies to shriveled petals on the ground. I arrived at the Tidal Basin during lunch and recognized the trees and the blossoms immediately. Today, they are 51 year-olds. Why? Because I am 51 years old and if I were a cherry tree covered with blooms this is what I’d look like. I look at the trees today and at some level, I can relate to where they’re at in their lifecycle. It was spooky, the kinship, the instant recognition.
Faded a tad, but don't discount 'em yet!
Call me vain, but actually, the blossoms today still looked pretty good. They were really nice. Yes. Actually, they were quite okay. They were still worth photographing, for the most part. Pretty much. At moments, when you looked at them just right, they looked attractive, yeah, attractive, that’s right. Almost beautiful. Almost. Umm… get my drift? They (and I) are still healthy and rarin’ to go, at least pretty much. It’s not quite like it was (at least for me) 10 or 20 years ago to be sure, but still, not bad. (thankfully, I’ll be middle-aged for a number of years more, while they’ll be that way a day or two more). I can imagine these trees having odd little aches and pains, wondering about a quickening pulse here, a pain in the knee or elbow or side there. If these trees had a consciousness and could be concerned about their aging bodies, I’m fairly sure they would be worrying about the unusual, unexplainable pains up and down their trunks, wondering if they had cancer or leukemia or maybe the Ebola virus, or possibly just a heart attack.
Aging buds, skyline linked
They were good to see, still somewhat stunning, but it was plain they weren’t what they once were. I’m not going to argue about that for them or me. How could they look as perky and perfect today as they did a week ago today? Only a small portion of the blossoms were still brilliant white. Most were a bit duller, some bordering on drab, even. That there were about a million or them, scads of drab blooms, was their saving grace. Any one or two or twenty of them, you might not have wanted in a vase on the dining room table. But taken together, all zillion of them: lovely. Same here: taken as a whole, I’m still a player.
I saw plenty of bald spots on many a cherry pate. I know a goodly portion of the acreage on my head is likewise exposed to the world. I know it but I don’t yet feel it. In my mind I’m still the hirsute fellow I was at 25. I think the cherries feel the same way. They still walked tall, held their heads up as if they still looked like they used to.
On a 51 year old, with less instant, stunning beauty to distract, you can’t help but notice a bit of paunchiness developing in the mid-regions. The gnarled, full-figured old cherry tree trunks were more noticeable now that the distracting, perfectly beautiful, perfect white blossoms had worn off.
A touch of noble paunch can look nice
Big tummy, little blossom
None of this is as discouraging as the lack of people there to appreciate the trees. I assure you there’s still plenty here to ooh and aah over, but there was a fraction of the oohers and aahers at the Tidal Basin today at lunch, than there was just a week ago, just a few days ago! How quickly the audience tires! Even the painter was gone, she who had been here even in the very chilly early days when the blooms were cute little six year olds, playing and swaying by the million on branch after branch. Was she only interested in young, virile, perfect trees, full of white bloom, the glorious specimens of last week? The beauty is still here. The lines, the shape, the form, and even the blossoms, albeit not as white and perfect as they were, but they’re still there.
The lines: still there!
We middle-agers, though reduced a bit, still carry the shape and the form of our younger selves. Hopefully still far from that inevitable woodpile, walking among these lovely middle-aged trees made me want to become a model, a performer, a 51 year-old paunchy stripper, even. Look at the trees! Look at me! We are still here. We are still vital. And if you look hard enough, carefully enough, you’ll see that we’re still, amazingly, surprisingly, easy on the eyes.
