Remembering Mother Nora

 

Remembering Mother Nora

I looked back into my brain, reaching and stretching my mind as I tried to remember her. Nora. The way she rustled in the wind, or the way her leaves changed in the fall: only to be pushed off the branches, landing onto the playground floor with a soft hiss. Now Nora was gone—the whole of her being; her trunk, her wide, fanning leaves; her scars in her bark and the knobs at her roots—I even missed her branches, the same branches that haunted me in my dreams—reaching and pulling me in like long, spindly tree fingers.

It had been eleven years since I had been to my old playground and I knew I had to see the spot where my Maple Tree, my Mother Nora, was, but I knew I should have braced myself better for the idea that maybe some lunatic janitor would have torn her down. But since I hadn’t braced for her to be gone—for to all be left is those little roots, you know the ones; they look like wiry hairs—and the dirt that they stick out of. I sat down on the ground where there should have been a stump—should have, but wasn’t.

And I cried in the silence as the cold, Washington rain started to drizzle on top of my head. I’d never see my tree again, nor would I ever be the same. It was just then I realized how quiet the playground had become. The kids were being loaded on the bus. Whipping my nose on the back of my sleeve, all twenty-years old of me wished to be back in the loud, hiss of the leaves—the weary murmur of her branches crackling in the wind—but I knew it was time for me to go, too. It was time to move on.