Dance of the palm fronds

I’ve had this image in my mind for the past two weeks. It was a Friday, and the wind gusted harder as the day progressed, which tends to make us all nervous, especially the dog. The dry weather alone was good for a little shock now and then, with the static buildup that makes a spark jump between one’s finger and any metal object, or even the cat’s tail. These twisting gusts stirred things up in occasional egg-beater bursts. At one point we heard something fall on the roof with a swoosh, and seconds later something else, so we went outside, and found a few dead palm fronds on the driveway. Presumably there were two more on the roof.

The uphill neighbor has a palm tree that stands 75 to 100 feet tall and hadn’t been trimmed, maybe ever, or at least not since it reached a height beyond what could be managed with the average household ladder. Its trunk was a shaggy column of dead fronds, attractive to nesting birds every spring. On the downhill side, a new owner has been renovating. He’s had people working every day for the past three months. That morning they’d poured a new driveway.

We didn’t think much of the fallen fronds, just that the wind was unusual, tearing at things that had hung around undisturbed for so long. It didn’t appear to be a great day to finish new concrete, with debris blowing everywhere, so we sympathized with the workmen. Back inside the house, we heard more sounds, and the gusts grew more frequent. Minutes later we heard a different sounding crash and returned outside. Even more palm fronds littered the driveway, one on the hood of the car, which must have made the new sound, another hanging from a power line that leads from the street to the house.

My husband got in the car to move it. I looked up at that tree. In that instant more fronds loosened their hold, in the grips of a wild gust. They parted from the tree, reddish tan feathers twirling in a graceful, slow-motion dance of ever-widening spirals. The sight mesmerized me, and it’s still clear in my mind, two weeks later. Palm fronds airborn against a clear blue sky, arcing slowly down, so light they seemed harmless, until I realized they would hit harder than they looked, and they have saw-tooth edges. I ducked behind the corner of the house, out of range, just as the workmen next door yelled a warning, in Spanish and so rapid I only caught their urgency, and more fronds crashed to the ground.

The attack of the wind and the fronds continued, with a brief power outage at one point, of a split second, just enough that we had to reset every clock in the house. By Saturday morning the driveway was a sea of dead fronds, and we contemplated the cleanup, me with the pessimistic view that our yard was already a mess and a cynical deity had muttered, “This yard is ugly anyway, so I’ll just dump all this here.” I wandered outside, and found a white pickup in the driveway, its owner, the owner of the tree, piling fronds from our driveway in the back of his truck. I thanked him and ran inside for the husband and some gloves. But not before I attempted to move a few bare-handed and a saw-tooth poked a hole in my finger. A good reminder, that drop of blood, to be cautious of red-brown feathers spiraling in a midair dance.