TREES
By Randy Johnson
I was around 18 and working for a landscaping company. One day I observed a husband and wife in the front yard of their house. They were young, like their neighborhood, and I took a break from my work to watch them.
The man was planting a tree; the woman was guiding him. The tree appeared as frail as an infant, yet as strong as an infant’s potential. Its leaves were tender shoots of green, a color signifying the season: flowers blooming brightly in yellows, purples, reds and whites; robins laying blue speckled eggs; fluffy Mallard ducklings soon to be following their mothers in lines practically straight; the hypnotic sweetness of lilacs refreshing the air. In the young couple’s hands, the tree was a piece in the building of their home.
About 10 years later, I was the husband with a wife. I had dug a deep hole in the front yard of our house, a hole I would fill with the root ball of an Autumn Purple Ash. But first things first: two young sisters sprung up from the bottom of the hole, standing boldly and amused on their feet. Had I pushed in the dirt, the youngest would have probably been covered to her waist and the oldest to her thighs. Their smiles – and mine - stretched as wide as the tree would someday rise upward. Two girls in a hole, a hole meant for a tree. A logical absurdity that the perspective of childhood brings to the building of a home.
Finally I placed the heavy young trunk with its ball of roots in the hole. I sprinkled the ball with a mixture of water and root nutrients before pushing displaced dirt to fill and cover the hole. The tree trunk
2
stood mostly straight, its thin, short branches sprouting tender green shoots. A layer of mulch, a splattering of water, and I was done: a new tree for our home.
Forty years have passed since I enviously watched the young couple planting a tree. Theirs was a perfect life - if based on the one story I have of them. But one story can’t tell the whole story. To wit: Mom and dad (me) and daughters sitting in the living room. Dad announcing separation. A wave of silence shooting through the room, masking explosions of confusion, sadness, turmoil and uncertainty. Like the breaking of polar ice by an invasion of heat, this was the story of our home falling apart.
I did not want this ending . . . but alas . . . I wrote it . . . Mountains crumble and lions roar every time I reread it. Our home was gone, its stories filed in a scrapbook forever unfinished, yet the tree I planted has thrived all the while. It has risen, as we had hoped, upward through time, as have our daughters, whose smiles, in concert with mine, have filled many stories since.
Two girls, now young women, sisters who stood – according to the story - in the tree-hole first, a story that plants a wide smile on my face every time I reread it.
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By Randy Johnson
I was around 18 and working for a landscaping company. One day I observed a husband and wife in the front yard of their house. They were young, like their neighborhood, and I took a break from my work to watch them.
The man was planting a tree; the woman was guiding him. The tree appeared as frail as an infant, yet as strong as an infant’s potential. Its leaves were tender shoots of green, a color signifying the season: flowers blooming brightly in yellows, purples, reds and whites; robins laying blue speckled eggs; fluffy Mallard ducklings soon to be following their mothers in lines practically straight; the hypnotic sweetness of lilacs refreshing the air. In the young couple’s hands, the tree was a piece in the building of their home.
About 10 years later, I was the husband with a wife. I had dug a deep hole in the front yard of our house, a hole I would fill with the root ball of an Autumn Purple Ash. But first things first: two young sisters sprung up from the bottom of the hole, standing boldly and amused on their feet. Had I pushed in the dirt, the youngest would have probably been covered to her waist and the oldest to her thighs. Their smiles – and mine - stretched as wide as the tree would someday rise upward. Two girls in a hole, a hole meant for a tree. A logical absurdity that the perspective of childhood brings to the building of a home.
Finally I placed the heavy young trunk with its ball of roots in the hole. I sprinkled the ball with a mixture of water and root nutrients before pushing displaced dirt to fill and cover the hole. The tree trunk
2
stood mostly straight, its thin, short branches sprouting tender green shoots. A layer of mulch, a splattering of water, and I was done: a new tree for our home.
Forty years have passed since I enviously watched the young couple planting a tree. Theirs was a perfect life - if based on the one story I have of them. But one story can’t tell the whole story. To wit: Mom and dad (me) and daughters sitting in the living room. Dad announcing separation. A wave of silence shooting through the room, masking explosions of confusion, sadness, turmoil and uncertainty. Like the breaking of polar ice by an invasion of heat, this was the story of our home falling apart.
I did not want this ending . . . but alas . . . I wrote it . . . Mountains crumble and lions roar every time I reread it. Our home was gone, its stories filed in a scrapbook forever unfinished, yet the tree I planted has thrived all the while. It has risen, as we had hoped, upward through time, as have our daughters, whose smiles, in concert with mine, have filled many stories since.
Two girls, now young women, sisters who stood – according to the story - in the tree-hole first, a story that plants a wide smile on my face every time I reread it.
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