Somewhere around the age of 27 my parents got old. I’m not quite sure exactly how and when it
happened. I was visiting home for the Thanksgiving holiday when I noticed the
gray in my dad’s beard. As if over
night, the gray had spread to every hair on his chin and head. Of course, the graying process had been going
on for some time, but it was that Thanksgiving I noticed it. A great sadness came over me, and an anxiety
set in that has since never left.
If we are lucky, we live blissfully unaware of the
devastation that time can wreck on our heart and souls for many years. With the exception of our pets, who share a
seventh or eighth of our life, many of the humans in our lives stay with us for
a considerable amount of our time on this earth. And we hope those humans
closest to us will share all of our
time on this earth. But time can be
cruel. It both giveth and taketh
away.
We cope with the aging process in different ways. Some of us look to the timelessness of
human-contrived things, like music or art.
While others look to the natural world.
We grasp on to starry night skies, oceans, or mountains, anything that
will anchor us in this time and place and keep us from uncontrollably flying
off into the dark abyss of the time-space continuum.
My anchor has always been trees.
Since a little girl I have regarded trees as magical
beasts. Many of them outlive us, and
they gracefully observe the passage of our existence. My childhood home was surrounded by old red
oaks. I grew up under those red oaks. I played “catch the leaf” under them in the
autumn. I cried under them, I played
under them, I lived under them. They
were as constant as the load-bearing walls in our home, holding up the forest
and sky. They were the stage of my being
for many years. During the early years we
would have strangers knock on our door to share stories about the largest of
the red oaks in the back. One older
woman reminisced with my dad about family reunions under that tree. It was a treasure, a constant. Of course trees do not live forever, and a
few times we had trees struck by lightning.
We lived on one of the tallest hills south of Atlanta, and the lightning
could not resist our closeness to its resident clouds. We lost three beautiful red oaks in my
childhood, and each one was a true loss.
Their removals made us feel naked, as if a piece of our home had been
taken away by God himself.
However, the majority of those red oaks, water oaks, and
Pecan trees too stood the test of time, at least in my 30 years of living on
North Davis Drive. They were there when
I discovered my passion for nature, when I prevailed through the awkward years
of puberty, when I went off to college, when I came home from college
(unemployed), and when I got married.
Those dear trees never left me.
They were there through the biggest of life changes. They have anchored me at my most
vulnerable.
I could make this essay about how noble a creature I
consider the tree. I could tell you that
they are selfless and giving. I could
tell you that one mature tree provides enough oxygen on which two humans can
subsist for a year. I could tell you
that I often do not think we as humans deserve trees. But this essay is not about what trees can do
for us and how we should feel little in their presence. Rather this is an essay about how trees and
nature can be celebrated for the life and sanity they provide us in our most
vulnerable of times – how trees have, at the very least, been my sanity through
watching my parents age and a changing world.
I am preparing for my next visit to see my folks. I have Christmas presents wrapped and cookies
baked. I am thrilled to see their faces
when we walk into their home, exhausted and irritable from the trip down I-40
in holiday traffic. They will welcome us
with open arms into their new home in the North Carolina mountains. It will be the first Christmas celebrated in
their new house, and I will not have my familiar trees to keep me company. However, I plan to make friends with the new
trees in their backyard. Their presence
will be a reminder of nature’s protracted time and in that reality I will find
comfort. I will see the white of my
dad’s beard and the unsteadiness of his gate, and I will feel comfort. For his aging is not too unlike a
tree’s. He is embarking on “mature tree”
status when it gets harder to recover from wounds and the common flu. It will be more difficult for him to bounce
back from life’s trials. But his roots
are strong and they have a lasting stronghold on my heart. He may be unsteady in the wind, but I will be
here to be his crutch. And when it is
all too much, when the tree analogies only make the hurt of aging loved ones
harsher, then I will simply take a walk in the woods. For it is there I will find the peace of
nature and her constant. It is there I
will be anchored on this earth and comforted in the pain and fear that time can
so harshly give. In time’s taking, my
walk among the trees will be my giving.
And together somehow we will be made stronger in the aging.
To my trees that always give, I love you. And to time, who can threaten to take
so much away, I honor you and will grace your presence with sturdy heart. May my roots be the witness of my loving and
my enduring.
