In preparing these posts, I scanned the past two years’ worth of photos. There are many, many more, I’m sure, buried on those external hard drives I should be using. These are enough, I think, to tell the story of what one tree meant to us.
Winter, it was a stark giant, spreading heavy branches against a bleak landscape, casting its shadow across fresh snow. Always, it dwarfed us, but in a friendly giant way, a sheltering way.
We loved the rhythm of its branches, the way they hung down like a skirt, and we loved seeing its bones revealed when the last brown leaf finally blew off it in November. It marked the sunrise for us, because this is where we wait for the bus every morning, August through early June.
.
We know how lucky we are to have a bus pick our kids up right at the end of our driveway. The first day of kindergarten for Liam; Phoebe heading back, a seasoned but very excited pro.
The oak, a great wooden granny, watching for the big yellow bus, leaning with anticipation, it seemed. And off they’d go, and the oak would stroke the bus roof with its leaves, waving farewell.
The oak sheltered us in rain and warmed us in the cold. If we backed right up against the east side of its trunk on a sunny cold winter morning, it blocked the wind and held the sun for us.
When the mornings got warm, we’d stay in its shade, and Liam would lose himself in Harry Potter or Wimpy Kid, only looking up when the bus rumbled up, a rooster tail of dust rising behind it. The oak gave us a place to be, a pool of cool, an umbrella over us as we waited.
There is more to the story, the difficulty being winnowing it all down, distilling 19 years of true love for a tree into just a few lines, a few of hundreds of images. The difficulty being having to do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment