When I was 8 or 9 years old, I would sometimes sneak out of my bed, creep over to the south window in the room I shared with my sister and slowly open the casement. I would sit there with my arms criss-crossed on the sill and let the Kansas wind blow across my face; it was sometimes warm, sometimes cool, depending on the time of year. I loved the feel of the breeze; loved the sound the trees made as they spoke a language I thought I should be able to understand but could never quite catch.
I don’t know if that’s where the love affair started, but there’s something in me that craves being around trees and is unsatisfied if they are missing. My yard, currently populated with eight trees of different varieties, could easily accommodate at least half a dozen more, I think.
One of my favorites, an Okame Cherry tree, situated prominently by the southwest corner of my drive, really needs to go. Josh, my landscape guy, keeps telling me “there’s just no hope left for it, Michelle”, but I hate to let him cut it down. If you could see how beautiful it is in the spring, you’d understand my hesitation; the blossoms are stunningly beautiful. But last year I noticed it struggling and this year it’s actually dying. Josh says he can’t save it and we can plant a new one to take its place. I told him to let me wait until spring. That tree was a favorite of our two girls as well…they would watch for the blooms each spring and stick the flowers in their hair when they played.
We were at dinner the other night as a family and the conversation morphed into what the girls remembered from when they were really little. It’s fun to hear their perspective on things that happened…especially when I’m looking at it from the adult lenses I wore at the time and they have an interpretation framed by childhood.
One of the things they both remember was the day my husband chopped down a Bradford pear tree in our back yard. It was three against one that afternoon. Two little blonde-haired sweethearts and a momma on one side, steaming; and him all alone on the other – half laughingly and yet patiently determined…sticking to his unpopular decision.
Yes, the tree was taking over our back deck space, with branches actually growing over the railing.
Yes, it interfered with plans for upgrading the deck.
But…?
It was a tree – and a gorgeous one at that. Couldn’t we build around it? Cut it back without chopping it down?
But the lone guy in our story said no. In the long run he was right. In the short run, he matter of factly not only chopped that beauty down, he expected the three of us to help him dispose of the remains.
That was not a good day.
In any case, I was thinking after that dinner table conversation about those fragments of early memory that sort of imprint themselves on your heart and become a part of your personal history and thought…they just stick. Some of these get intertwined and become such an integral piece of who you are and what you love that it’s impossible for you to know the beginning. It’s always been there, it seems. They’re a part of your becoming and you can’t always explain; or maybe even understand how they became so important.
I think the farm I grew up on is one of those things for me. It provided a framework for everything that came after; a grounding of security, which was largely courtesy of the happy childhood my parents gave me. As I grew older I realized how precious that was, how gifted I was without even knowing it at the time. Through no merit of my own, I had parents who provided a place for me to “grow up slow”, as Shane Stevens says. They loved each other well and, consequently, also loved me.
Apart from the love that sheltered us, part of what made our farm so kindly, so protective, were the trees that graced our green, green lawns. There were so many of them! Some of them were old, they “came with the place”, my dad used to say. Some of them my grandparents planted when the house and barn were young and my grandmother was a pretty momma, busy raising four boys with my grandfather – who left a legacy of manliness and grace in the sons God gave him. Some of the them my mom and dad planted. In any case, I’ve had a fascination with them…and others like them…ever since I was a little girl.
The trees on our farm all grew tall and strong – and we grew up right along with them. Maybe that’s why I love them so much. As a kid, I ran around our big yard, making friends with every one of the favorites we had growing there. Maple, oak, catalpa, apple, elm, cherry, pine.
Those trees are as much a part of my childhood as the white barn with the hayloft (where there were invariably at least one littler of kittens each spring), the sunny kitchen with homemade bread cooling on mom’s wooden bakery racks, and the porch where our puppy, Puff 2.0, would lay in a patch of sunlight, tired after my sister and I spent the afternoon putting our doll clothes on her.
When I was little, I would lay outside under the catalpa and maple trees that shared our lawn and dream dreams. And “share” is the right word here. It really doesn’t matter if the tree was there first or if you plant it and it grows up after you. Trees belong to a place more than you or I ever will. They just fit.
I couldn’t have put this into words as a small child, but as I grew I was able to put names to the emotions these trees gave to me. During the day they seemed wise, old and friendly; somehow indulgent as I tried to climb as high as I could…hand over fist, getting scraped knees and elbows as I went higher. I think the leaves played along as I would try to touch them with my bare feet, stretching as far and high as I could on the homemade swing that daddy surprised us with one afternoon in June; made just for us, just for fun. I could imagine faces in the gnarled bark on the tree as I jumped off the swing from somewhere in mid air.
At night the trees seemed different, though. Their personalities changed somehow in the moonlight. They weren’t wholly welcoming then; they seemed to be beyond me somehow; mysterious. Still beautiful, still good, but not of the here and now. As I listened to them…sitting on the floor while my sister slept, they “uttered speech and declared knowledge” even if part of it was lost in translation. They would be here long after I left…and they knew it. Lucy Maud Montgomery used to say that trees hold something back at night and I think she was right. There’s an aloofness to them then; a secret we aren’t privy to.
If I hadn’t left too much make-believe behind me somewhere back with childhood days, I would almost say that there’s a bit of good magic going on here. Wonder is a necessary thing and we lose too much of it as we grow up. There’s a spark of divinity in these bits of creation…some of His mystery is there and it inspires awe and gratitude. Of course, God is separate and above His creation, but He puts a bit of Himself into everything He creates, doesn’t He? And of course that’s what I mean.
Trees are often used as an allegory for shelter (which is one of my favorite words, coincidentally). They protect, sustain and are symbols of great beauty and strength. Beautiful examples of what the Eternal One provides for us daily…and in His grace and mercy are given whether or not we acknowledge Him. Trees are enduring reminders…through our lifetimes at least…of who He is. He really does show His divine nature, eternal power, and invisible qualities clearly through what has been made. And He continues this process every second of every lifetime.
I think sometimes we become jaded to the hints of eternity that surround us because they are so familiar to us. We don’t recognize God in our midst because He so often uses things with which we have become far too familiar. And in our case, that which is familiar becomes less inexplicable…though it shouldn’t.
Chesterton was able to communicate this idea so clearly in his book Orthodoxy. I think everyone should include him on their reading list; he has a singularly unique way of cutting right to it:
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
The heavens declare and the skies proclaim…and so does every plant, animal, ocean wave and tree. I think there’s something kindred that gets passed down through the ages…as if something from the Beginning must pulse through every subsequent generation in the countless lineage of creation. And, because we are all put together so differently, different things will speak to different people. Some will see His reflection when climbing mountains; others will see it in the study of the universe. But whatever the case, there’s a longing that accompanies those thoughts…and a continuity that calls us to “come further up and further in.”
For me, it’s a reminder, a bridge constructed of the things that connect the past to what’s still to come…like the line of the blessed ones that the nameless author of Hebrews recites…gifting me with the hopeful knowledge that I can be part of the exquisite line of the faithful.
Think of it…we get to catch the hand of the one just ahead of us and then turn, and hold out our hand to the one who comes next.
There’s beauty for you.