Trees

friendship with a young birch

The trees are really good instructors. Keep pushing your hands towards the sun. Stay down to earth and you’re less likely to fall on your face. Allow the roots you have to hold onto other around you in humility and strength. Drink and be still by the creek where the old heavy fish swim. The pretty honey vines try to strangle the trees and choke them, but they can’t. The roots are stronger than you’re able to see.

Some of the most memorable times during our childhood were in nana and papa’s yard up in a tree or in the tree house. I felt so safe between a limb and the trunk when my legs were scarred with briars and I knew exactly how to get back down. Some scaredy cats thought it was dangerous, but I knew it was safe in the trees.

Trees are still important places of safety to me.  They still teach me, whether I’m on a walk alone, or driving by lines of pines where rows open and close in view and out of view planted in slanted aisles.

There’s one smooth birch on my morning walk where I always stop to pray. I let it hold all my weight while I arch my back like I’m going to fall away. It never lets me go.

It has grown double since I started passing by, and someone broke a green glass bottle near its feet last week, but I didn’t cry, because trees aren’t real. And it didn’t catch my tears because it has no hands. But I’ve thought of those shards of green glass since, and I know it’s ridiculous to be attentive to unimportant things, but, when you love something, it has a worth.

I leave stuff for it to hold. Heavy things, things no one else can see.  I leave pride and a one sided thought that I can handle the weight of any day all by myself.  I leave my maturity and I swing from side to side until every rib cracks and my bones are in the right order. 

I leave fear that anything or anyone else is in those woods: killers or homeless hungry angry men or rabid animals or snakes. I lift my eyes to the maker of the wind who walks with me and leave the rest behind. 

I leave my prayers for the faces I love so much. I leave my worry there.  I’ve watered that bare skinned birch more mornings than one. Today when I was there I thanked God for you.

There is an old family tree with great deep and complex root systems. We’ve been linked since we heard you’d arrived, the first birthday and the outdoor open fire cooking at nanas, your falls and splinters, and your birthdays and ballgames. We all knew you’d be great in height and intelligence and thoughtfulness, it was always clear. And here you are.

We’re all changed by the restructuring of strength from grandparent to parent to children.  How cool is the dust that covers us.  How fast we would run if anyone of us came undone. We have been there, hospital and funeral, wedding and beaches and campsites. And we always will be. No matter what.

It’s not that there’s any perfection that any of us know. Our strength is knowing the root weaver, the dust to dust life source. He’s the one to keep us from being cut off from each other.  We’re planted like oaks by streams of living water. 

He makes us stop and play and swing, walking beside us and keeping us from all harm.

May the wind of our family branches always echo as you walk and wherever you are. The trees, quiet as they go, are strong in their leafy wave, never boasting about their stature, but heads held high because of their roots and their focus on the son.  And this is the direction you’re heading. I’m so proud of you.