Trees

"Us sing and dance,

make faces and give flower bouquets,

trying to be loved.

You ever notice that trees do everything

to git attention we do, except walk?"

Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

Pam's blog today was about trees. It made me want to take a walk in the woods. Instead I'm in Dad's room listening to his stomach rumbling. He's fallen asleep so his breathing is quiet, restful.

Thinking about trees, I remember when I first moved to Florida. It is no surprise that the sights and sounds of life outside my front door took a dramatic turn when I moved here from Illinois back in 1962. I don't remember much about life on that Navy base except that it was pretty carefree in the summer and cold in the winter. Of course one of the first things I noticed about my new home in the South was the heat. I'm sure as a kid I didn't pay much attention to things like humidity or heat index. Basically it all rolled up together to be HOT. Another thing that I noticed when we first got to Florida was how the neighborhood teemed with oak trees. Big ol' things that seemed to have been here since time began. And what was cool about the trees besides their size was the Spanish moss that hung from the brances like aluminum icicles thrown at Christmas trees by over zealous decorators. I didn't know about native Timucuan Indians at the time, but now I can imagine them weaving their way down the river under cover of moss-draped oaks.

Over the years a lot of the trees have fallen or been cut down. They have a tendency to rot in the middle and surprisingly they don't have a deep root system so it doesn't take much of a wind to blow them over. If there is one thing you don't want during hurricane season, other than wind and rain pelting you from all sides, it is to have a humongous tree fall on your roof. Homeowners and tree surgeons have learned, some the hard way, to trim the trees so that wind blows through the branches. Thankfully there are still a lot of the old trees around, enough to give the neighborhood character.

After reading Pam's post, I decided I must be a forest girl, rather than a tree girl. I think I spend more time looking at the overall tree picture than the individual trees. I think I have missed noticing the characteristics that make trees trees. The roots, the knots, the limbs, the leaves. When I think of walking through a grove of trees, I think of somewhere woodsy, not my own neighborhood. When I think of walking in my neighborhood, I think of the whole rather than the parts. Is it human nature to look out instead of in, or away instead of near?

I am trying so hard to take good care of my father. I don't deny that I'm doing that, yet I wonder if I spend too much time looking at the big picture and not enough time looking at the man. Have I lost sight of the fact that even when he barks out orders like Capt. Bligh, he's a man who is maybe scared and/or hurting.

Can my dad see that I'm more than a nurse/kitchen maven/secretary/pill giver/face washer/etc? Does he ever stop to look at the girl who is sad and scared?

In the big forest of our lives, I wonder what kind of trees we are, my dad and I. When I look at him do I see a solid oak, rigid and unmovable unless pressed by 150 MPH winds? Do I see a sturdy Elm who shelters and supports. Do I see a fruit tree that I can count on to feed me? Or do I see a Scotch pine that looks all pretty and green but pokes you with its needles if you come too close?

What kind of tree does Dad see when he looks at me? Something pretty like a Redbud? Something sweet like a Sugar Maple? Or something hard (and un-yeilding) like a walnut whose timber is "hard, dense, and tight grained"?

I'd like to think of myself as a willow. I'm not sure why they are said to be weeping but that is a pretty fair description of me a good deal of the time. I like that willows have the kind of branches that when the wind blows they seem to say, come on in, sit awhile. Willows, by their nature bend but don't break easily. Their roots are "are remarkable for their toughness, size, and tenacity to life ..." Roots, that's something I hold dear. And even though you might think I'm a whiner and often a big baby boohoo I do have a toughness about me that helps me weather the storms of life that blow my way. Yeh, if I could be a tree I think think I'd like to be a willow. But then, it might be a fun to be a Christmas tree, all dressed up and fancy, and holding gifts that make people smile. But then it might be cool to be a giant Redwood, standing almost tall enough to reach the sky or the stars, home to all sorts of birds and critters. Hmmm, maybe if you put them all together I would be a giant, weeping redwood Christmas willow tree. In other words a Merry ME tree.

What about you? What kind of tree would you be?

Wishing for you a forest full of stately trees to take refuge in,

Merry ME