Cherry Blossom Sunday
Charlie MacGregor shuffles his feet along the cement of the park path in the old brown shoes he’s had polished just for today. It’s good that he isn’t in a hurry; adjusting his tweed cap every few steps, hitching up his trousers every few steps more, taking care not to crush the bouquet he has brought. The trousers have become longer it seems with each passing year; his belt coming in one more hole too. He feels the whisper of his Anna walking beside him. Patting his hand, more knotted now than it was in their early years, she’s looking down at his baggie pants, and saying,
“Let me tend to that.”
He can see the bench ahead now. No one is sitting there today underneath the cherry blossoms; young lovers preferring to sit on blankets on a rare day of sun, whispering sweet words, with eyes only for the other.
But they had always chosen this bench, on this Sunday, the first Sunday after the cherry blossoms had come into bloom. It was on this day so long ago that Charlie had pulled her close and kissed her for the first time, his heart racing, his younger hands trembling as he held her face; confetti of pink petals falling around them, creating an outline of lovers embraced. It was on their Sunday a year later, that he’d asked her to marry him, and on their Sunday only a year after that Anna told him they would be having a bairn of their own.
Every year on their Cherry Blossom Sunday they came back to this bench, and it is every year that he continues to come back now that she is gone, because it is their day and he knows he will find her here, with crinkles around the edges of her eyes, with her smile and her laugh on the breeze. With cherry blossoms falling around them, and seeing his heavy heart, he’ll hear her say,
“Let me tend to that.” And she will.
Years later, Charlie will be gone too, and two lovers will sit across from the bench on a blanket spread out on an expanse of green soaking up the rays of another rare sunny Sunday, and they will witness the cherry blossoms falling with the May breeze in an odd way onto the bench.
Curious, they will make their way over and see that the blossoms have fallen in a way that appears to have created an outline around two lovers sitting there, and they will feel invited to sit down in those outlines. With cherry blossom petals raining down on them, the man will snag his pants on a splinter of the bench, tearing a hole in the leg of his trousers, and the woman will pat his young hand, and taking his hand to cup her face, she will whisper to him,
“Let me tend to that.”