Lost Branches and the Long-ago Me

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace. (Carlos Santana, musician)

Occasionally as I swivel in my desk chair away from the computer, I see an unframed black-and-white photo of me taken when I was in perhaps seventh grade. The private school uniform is a huge clue. The hair-style is late nineteen-fifties curlers. And I can be certain that the artificial rolls collapsed by noon, if not sooner.

Most of my memories from those days have disappeared as well.

The girl in the picture is a shy, unsophisticated girl, favorite place to go, the library. She is insecure in groups. Yet capable. At least in my head, I tell her my stories as I write them—as if she didn’t already exist somewhere inside this much older body. I wonder if she hears me.

For a writer the internal and the external world need to meet. Perhaps these forces will never understand one another completely. For me, if open hearts and peace appear along the way, I have touched my purpose. At least for the duration of a page.

When my older son was a toddler my husband and I planted a blue spruce tree in our front yard. The tree was a gift from my son’s great uncle. It was my son’s tree. Years later the tree became the front yard and housed birds of all colors and varieties.

Then disease, fungi, spider mites attacked the tree. With the help of a huge cash loss, the spruce survived. Not all of its branches made it. For the bird residents the effect became more patio than closed door. No safe place away from predators.

But, the tree never has held a promise of safety. We have always seen feathers and dead birds in the yard. Cooper hawks. Preying cats, waiting.

I pause and look again at the long-ago picture of twelve-year-old me. Knowing the young girl doesn’t see the present. I remember how she walked home from school alone after a difficult day of taunting. How she prayed and wondered how the saints managed. Those characters had been presented as emotionless beings. The martyr, St. Lawrence, said as he was being burned to death: “Turn me over. I’m done on this side.” Is that true? Really? Then came saints who levitated and spoke to larger-than-life beings beyond the grave.

I tell her about the very ordinary tree and tell her to stay inside the very ordinary day. The beauty is all around her. In some ways I want to spare her more serious attacks to come, the pain, the pruning that will inevitably follow. I cannot. Any more than I can bring back birds killed by the Cooper Hawk.

“Paths through branches are now open. Free. You may not have wings. But you can still fly.” I’m surprised. I have spoken out loud. And I pray that my words carry peace.

blue spruce before and after