December 25, 2024
For the sin of lifting up the sidewalk with its roots, a stately, healthy liquidambar tree across the street is to be cut down tomorrow.
When I walked by this morning I put my hand briefly to its trunk, whispered I love you, goodbye. Does it know that it’s down to the last few hours of Earth life?
It’s not old or diseased. There’s nothing wrong with it. It hasn’t lived out its normal span of years. But it’s become inconvenient to humans, and so it has to go.
*****
Every time I notice the tree today, looking out our front window, I’m memorizing its quirky beauty. After it’s gone, I want to be able to call up a visual overlay of it rather than subject my vision to the ugly silhouettes of houses that it now disguises with an intriguing reach of branches and changing palette of leaves.
I wonder if the same could hold true with people? If there’s a mental camera that can capture an eternal picture of a loved one, so even if they’re gone, I can see them?
*****
Christmas is often melancholy for me, as I’m sure it is with many in my age bracket and small-family circumstances. If we’re lucky enough to have elderly parents still on board, every year we can’t help wondering if this is going to be their last Christmas.
But the familiar melancholy can’t defeat the underlying burble of hopeful, looking-forward feeling, largely engendered by the upcoming Trump presidency. And for me, ten months post–hip surgery, every day is a joy of walking in the neighborhood, talking with and connecting to people.
Even saying goodbye to the liquidambar hasn’t thrown me into unremitting sadness. There’s acceptance with it. I did my best, talking with neighbors, talking with the city. Our desire to keep the tree doesn’t outweigh their wanting to lessen the liability from those buckled sidewalks.
Somehow, seeing it every day for more than 24 years has imprinted the tree on me. I’ve internalized something of its essence, its soul. The city hacking it down and hauling it away can’t destroy the connection I feel with the tree, with all of nature, for that matter.
It’s not precisely peace or acceptance, but some feeling beyond and between what those two words convey. I feel like an aged presence that can’t be surprised or discomfited, that watches life unreeling as it will, without trying to step into the picture as it moves through foreordained degrees of time.
It feels like a Christmas gift given from self to self. I accept, say thank you, and fold it inside my heart.
