Cherry Blossoms
In praise of friendship & soft people
Note: The names in this essay have been changed for privacy.
“There are gentle people to whom the world is not gentle...they're treated with cold and harsh behavior that they receive with hurt and, worse, surprise. That's the part I can't bear - thinking of someone expecting the world to be soft the way that they're soft, and finding that it isn't... It's also the case that I'm never more moved to commit violence than when I think of the way vulnerable people suffer for the callousness of others, which I think is what they call a paradox, or perhaps merely the wages of sadness." -Freddie DeBoer
There is a picture of you taking a picture of cherry blossom trees. Your face isn’t in view, but I’m sure you were smiling because you always look at nature as if it is alive. I love seeing your sketches of the garden you work in. In the photo, your knees are slightly bent, phone in hand, fingers adjusting the lens. You are wearing converse, sweatpants, a jean jacket, and a gray crossbody purse. Your naturally brunette hair is dyed dark pink, which brings out the color of the cherry blossoms framing you and reaching into the sky. We are on the sidewalk of a busy intersection in D.C. staring over a lake as the sun goes down. The border of the lake is encapsulated in cherry blossom trees sprouting out of patchy grass. The sun, as it starts to resign itself to night, is an orange-gold reflection in the water. In the frame you are off center, the reflection is barely visible, and the patchy grass takes over the entire bottom half of the photo. It is inelegant, but it was the only moment I had to capture a picture of you over the whole trip.
You don’t know how many times I tried to back out of this trip. I said repeatedly that I couldn’t do it alone. I rarely traveled, I hadn’t been on a plane since I was six or seven, and I had certainly never navigated airport layovers alone. Once I arrived in D.C., the thought of being at a conference surrounded by hundreds of people I didn’t know on a schedule I had no control over was terrifying. I would even have to share a room with a complete stranger for two nights. I insisted it would be best to stay home. But in the end, of course, I didn’t.
“Your roommate is Penny, from UCLA,” I was told. I asked Nick, the only person I knew on this trip, whether he knew you, worried I would be stuck with someone overwhelming.
“She’s cool. You two will get along,” Nick assured me. We didn’t meet until several hours later. You didn’t travel often either, but you were incredibly calm. You were ten years older than I, yet we got along perfectly. We both loved James Baldwin, and you taught me about eastern religions and art and how to appreciate life slowly.
That first night as we were both unpacking you realized you still had an x-acto knife in your art kit that you somehow got past TSA. We laughed and you threw it away as we made our way to dinner. On the way, I tried to joke about how Winter seemed to be talking down to everyone, treating people her own age like kindergarteners to be rounded up, but I quickly dropped it because you refused to say anything unless it was a kind word.
At dinner we sat with guys from Stanford and Brandeis University. You hit it off with the guy from Brandeis. He was from Nepal, and he wanted to go to another American university originally, but the way he tells it, his guidance counselor had already written another student a recommendation for his top choice, so she flipped to a random page in the binder of American universities and her finger landed on Brandeis. It was a Jewish school. He wasn’t Jewish, but he ended up liking it there and enjoyed learning about their traditions. You and he immediately dove into eastern culture and religion.
I don’t think you’ve ever made small talk with anyone. It was always a conversation about love, life, and the universe. You only speak about things worth your breath.
The two of us walked from the hotel to the Capitol, and we stopped to take pictures of the cherry blossoms on the way. I was concerned about if the walk was too far, and it was getting dark soon, and we didn’t know our way around, but you said simply we could see what we wanted until we got tired of walking and then take an Uber back. So, as the sun began to set, I took a photo of you taking a photo of the famous cherry blossom trees. Then we walked to the Lincoln Memorial and got a car back to the hotel. You handled the car while I searched for dinner options.
You, of course, are vegetarian, because you can’t bear to think of the pain of the animals (neither can I), so we ordered veggie Asian bowls for dinner and ate in our room. We discovered a shared love for Hannibal and used the face masks you brought. We tried to watch Hannibal, but the pirating website I was using had so many pop-up ads it was impossible to get through more than ten minutes. We laughed and gave up. We were both in bed by ten p.m.
You had to leave early for your flight, so we didn’t get to say a proper goodbye. Every time I see one of your Instagram posts I think of you as the most tenderhearted person I’ve ever met. I watch as they become more and more sorrowful, and I demand to know who hurt you. It turns out, it was the Brandies boy. You had stayed in touch with him, texting every day, and you flew across the country to go see him, where he stood you up. Still, you don’t utter a bad word about him. Only that he was going through a lot, and you tried over and over to show him how beautiful he was, and you wish he had believed you.
Once, a teacher told you that you had written the most passionate statement about happiness he had ever read. You broke down in tears because when you wrote that you believed it, and now, you still do, but you don’t feel the same way, you can’t access the version of yourself that wrote it.
I can text you, no matter how long it has been, and say “I’m thinking about you” without any awkwardness. We won’t talk for a year, but I’ll send you a quote that reminds me of you because I know you’ll appreciate it. I bought one of your koi fish paintings on a whim and you included a post it note with a Buddhist tale about hard work. I framed the fish and the note. Both sit propped on my desk between a photo of Alan Watts and James Baldwin. Every once in a while, you text to say you’re proud of me, as if in those two days we shared you became my permanent older sister.
A part of me wants to strangle this boy, more moved to commit violence than I’ve ever been, but I know that isn’t what you would want. I just want him to understand that for the two days I was with you everything became the most intimate symbol of love, and the world became something I did not have the words for. If you ever stopped smiling at cherry blossoms, I wouldn’t be able to forgive him, not like you.
