Angie's Tree

Some events cut in many directions. This one happened a month ago. Words tumbled to the page...

It started with the chainsaws. A buzzing in the back of my head as I climbed out of bed and made my way to the kitchen. I wasn’t even curious. Just neighborhood noise. Another tree going down, as many have since several brutal windstorms. 

I wandered down to my husband’s office area to check in. 

 

“They’re taking down Angie’s tree,” he said. 

 

“Oh, wow…”

 

Looking out from our daylight basement window, up loomed a boom bucket holding chainsaw-man and, like a knife through butter, limbs fell away.  

 

I texted my daughters, receiving their sadness and surprise within minutes. 

 

“My childhood is disappearing!” said Monica. 

 

“There goes your shade,” from Jillian. 

 

“Oh gosh, I never thought of that.” 

 

All our shade. And our view changed yet again. A few years ago, another neighbor took out a diseased evergreen and opened our view to the bluff. A bit of privacy gone. Now, even more, we are exposed.

 

I liked my closed in yard with its closed in view from the west. No privacy on either side of us, but you could hunker down on the covered patio and feel a bit of sanctuary and solitude. I will miss that… just like I miss so many things. 

 

And here I am, getting choked up over a tree. 

 

But so much has changed and been torn down around us. Monica was right. Much of her childhood has disappeared. 

 

So much of all my children’s landscape is gone. Just a few blocks away, their low profile, flat-roofed, 60s era grade school was razed to make way for a neo-mid-century brick two-story. A couple miles west, the sprawling middle-aged middle school was replaced by a business-like edifice, two stories of brick and glass. 

The trees of their childhood, also gone. A Mountain Ash to a utility company chop and the need for a play area. The scraggly Hawthorne to Ice Storm 1996. A weakened Ponderosa pine got the axe over a decade ago. And lastly… our iconic double birch. Ever the landmark for directions and shade for the driveway of sidewalk chalk and basketball, it succumbed to disease and came down a year ago last fall.

 

Oh, that birch… 

Black-scored, white trunks V-ing up to tall, drapey canopy. The kids climbed her back in the day and had pictures taken in her shade. Without fail, the grands ran up the slope to hide behind her instead of getting “right in the van” for home. 

Always the first to show the season change, her leaves turned to golden stars every fall and rained down like cornflakes on the still-green grass. Sure, she left a constant barrage of stringy branches littering the yard and driveway and street, but she was so graceful with swaying branches and dappled shade. 

I don’t miss the mess of that old birch, but Lord, the sight of her… and the memories.

And now another loss. 

After years of standing impervious, several limbs broke off that stately Canadian maple during the last winter windstorm. Dangerous-sized limbs, landing on Angie’s roof and yard, thankfully, injuring no one. Angie declared then that the tree would have to go. 

Today was the day. 

I wonder if Angie will miss the shade of her maple. A lush, 60-year-old tree, it towered behind our aged arborvitae hedge for decades, home to squirrels and birds, alike. Now she’s gone and nothing will ever shade the same in our views out the window. 

Only memories of shade. Of a life spent here. Of badminton, playing catch, whiffle ball, BBQs, graduation and birthday parties in her shade. Respite from harsh summer sun, a place for our long-ago swing set, the bottom half of the slip n slide slope... 

I took a photo toward the end. A tall center branch with a few stunted arms was all that remained. A climber with claw boots cutting huge hunks that landed with a tremble and thud. I pictured giant divots in Angie’s yard. Signs of battle. Pock marks, chunks of trunk and tree flesh the only remains of her grandeur. 

The mangy arborvitaes now stand alone, long past their prime. 

Will they be next? 

 

The generations pass… 

We lost my mom-in-law a year ago, matriarch of my kids’ childhood landscape. The first of their grandparents to die. 

And in the past twelve months, hundreds of thousands gone to the scourge of a pandemic in the US alone. Many of them also beloved grandparents. 

 

Too many losses. Changes. 

Can’t everything stand forever?

 

But the maple is gone, and all that remains of the birch is a scab of dirt set to be regraded and sodded. Their absence, a void. 

And I wonder... do I see barren or clean slate? 

 

Today it feels barren. 

Perhaps we’ll get to clean slate. 

Or perhaps the next owners will plant the new landscape. 

 

But generations to come will never know the beauty of these trees. 

 

We often fail to grasp the transitory nature of life. It’s only as the decades pass, a parade of loss and change, that these days and the buzz of a saw bring tears.

Life sometimes feels as brutal and decisive as that chainsaw. 

Pieces of your heart and soul crashing to the ground leaving divots... wounds eventually filled by earth and wind, falling leaves and time. 

Signs of healing in the moment, yes, but once fully felled, will anyone remember your life at all? 

 

It all began with morning chainsaws, and I am undone.