How to Find Abundance

Or... A prompt for the season of giving.

I'm ready to lie down and nap until January 2nd. I know you’re as busy as I am right now. You’re probably overdosing on eggnog, playing “Last Christmas” bingo, and watching “Love Actually” while reciting every line under your breath and putting your hands over your pre-teen’s eyes for the naked parts. But don't be a Grinch or a Stooge. Because you know the stress is worth it. Right?

I've been thinking about abundance lately, so I've resurrected a story from a few Italian summers ago. It's a different tone from my usual posts here, but I think we could all enjoy slowing down a little.

This will be my last post of 2024. I want to prepare to help you smash your 2025.

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We've developed an early evening habit. Around 6:00 p.m., we wander out under the new pergola to sit in the comfy chairs and gaze out over the valley. Music and laughter drift up from the village while we sip our lightly fizzy white from a local vineyard.

After living in The Bahamas for so many years, barefoot is my default state, and barefoot is fine once the patio tiles have cooled after the afternoon sun. But barefoot isn't acceptable when smashed figs and hungry wasps are underfoot.

We were warned.

When we arrived that summer, we were thrilled to see the fig tree's growth. The year before, during the construction of the patio and pergola, the fig tree sat for days, root exposed, and surroundings disrupted. We were worried it would never recover from the trauma. Now, it stretched leafy, gnarled arms over the open roof of the pergola, and we couldn't wait until it grew even more to provide much-needed shade.

My Italian bestie, Lori, looked at our friend and frowned, shaking her head of curls.

"This will not work," she said. "This tree will make a mess."

I dismissed her easily: "It's fine. We'll sweep up the fallen figs every morning."

We ignored the fig tree’s cheeky foreshadowing, a prelude to its full fruity chaos. A few weeks earlier, we'd had lunch with the family, and the tree made himself known by projecting tiny unripe figs from a thirty-foot height. They bounced off of heads and arms, and there was much ouching and swearing.

But now? Things were worse.

Ripe figs don't bounce; they splatter, spilling juice, seeds, and irresistible wasp food all over our new tiles. When they dried, which they did rapidly under the hot Italian sun, it didn't prevent the wasps, but it prevented the clean-up. Even a pressure washer wielded by an expert washer with pressure (me!) wouldn't budge fig splat. It was time to change our plans.

We got to work. Mark cut the branches away from the pergola's roof, and I braved the wasp swarms to salvage the ripe, ready-to-fall fruits. Only about twenty percent of them were ripe, but six hundred ripe figs later, yes, I said six hundred, we had regained some form of control over the assault of the ficchi. I named him Ficchi, the tree that is (it's Italian for fig, very creative of me). When pruning was complete, and Ficchi stood, nearly naked and looking a little sad, my heart went out to him, and I remembered another good tree friend from my past.

When I first met Mark, he lived in an ancient farmhouse from a former dairy on two acres of tree-studded property. I formed an instant attachment to the towering oak tree at the end of the driveway. I named him Alfred. Alfred became an essential fixture in our relationship. He welcomed me every time I pulled into the driveway, filled with anticipation after a four-hour drive from New Jersey. He cradled a tipsy me inside his high branches after Mark boosted me up his trunk one night after dinner (the first time I'd climbed a tree since childhood). We made up stories about Alfred's life in the field and his yearning for Daphne, a neighboring tree just outside Mark's bedroom window and only a few feet away from his yearning branches. In the secret black of a moonless night, we spread a blanket in the grass and made love under his sheltering branches. I loved Alfred.

Disaster struck one night as a tropical storm passed through Virginia. Mark woke to find Alfred, burly, untouchable Alfred, snapped at his base and all sixty feet of him sprawled and broken across the field. We decided that to leave Alfred's disposal to strangers would be unfeeling and unthinkable. We spent hours collecting the smaller twigs and branches and binding them in bundles to leave for the garbage men. Then Mark bought a chainsaw and got to work on the branches. By the time the work was finished, only Alfred's massive trunk and a few branches too big for the saw remained. But Alfred kept on giving.

During the weeks it took to clean him up, Alfred became a playhouse for four-year-old Emily. We dug into the high grass under a few stable branches, and Mark built a little door to access the hidey-hole. We brought out blankets and her books, and Colonel the cat visited her often. Alfred also played a key role in Mark and Emily's bonding. Every evening they would wander, hand-in-hand, down to the highest part of the fallen trunk, Mark would lift Emily to the top and climb up to sit with her so they could watch the sunset together. I remember looking out the upstairs window, watching the two of them chatting and cuddling, and my heart swelling with gratitude for Alfred. Even after he'd fallen, he was still giving us his love.

A few months after Alfred's demise, we moved into our first home as a family. And Alfred kept on giving. Our new house had a fireplace, and Mark shifted truckload after truckload of Alfred's logs to a wood pile at the back of our house. We burned Alfred for close to a year before the pile was diminished.

During our first Christmas in that house, Mark introduced Emily to a Scottish tradition. She wrote her list for Santa, and Mark tossed it into the fire just above the flames. The hot air wafted the paper, unburned, up and out the chimney directly into Santa's hand as he drove by on his sleigh. It was the sparks of Alfred's branches that Emily watched shoot from our chimney when she ran outside and saw (to this day, she insists she saw) Santa picking up her list.

It was Alfred I was thinking of when I carried those six hundred figs into our closet-sized kitchen and began to cook. What had initially seemed like a burden (what the heck was I going to do with six hundred figs), I realized, was a gift. Just as Alfred's logs had enriched our lives, so would these figs. I made every fig recipe I could find: fig jam, fig chutney, fig newtons, fig biscotti, fig cake. I carried this abundance with me and passed it out to my neighbors, using my broken Italian but enriching our friendships and connections. Life is filled with abundance in the most unlikely of places. Ficchi had bestowed an abundance of gifts just as Alfred had, and it was my responsibility to make the most of them.

There are no screens on the windows of our hundred-year-old Italian house, so I quickly had an abundance of buzzing company in the kitchen. This time, instead of being frustrated by the wasps, I welcomed them inside.

After all, they loved Ficchi too.

Journal Prompt

As we juggle the holiday madness, it's easy to forget that life, much like Ficchi, drops unexpected gifts at our feet. Abundance is everywhere, especially at this time of year. I'm thinking of the abundance of friends I have worldwide. The abundance of subscribers I am so lucky to have read my work—the abundance of Christmas decorations my Mum has saved over the years. I'm journaling about how to best serve these gifts of abundance. How can I make the most of what life, nature, and people have gifted me with? What about you?

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