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transplants
Aug. 8th, 2013 11:20 pmThere was no writing workshop this week, but Toni supplied a prompt via Facebook. It led me to try again to write a piece I first attempted over a month ago.
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She said she should really plant some trees. Not that she wanted to, but people kept telling her she should. The two ageless maples that had grown near the house she'd lived in for nearly 50 years had broken in the ice storm, and now all that was left were the stumps, two feet in diameter. People told her the acre looked so bare, and to my mind they were right: the small ranch house, green siding fading into the surrounding grass, at the top of the now-treeless hill. No flowers, of course; my father thought flower beds were too much trouble, and my mother never objected, whatever her feelings. From the road, the house looked both small and ominous, shrunken and looming.
Well, I could plant trees, I said, if she could get them delivered from whatever nursery she bought them from. She said actually, she'd been thinking of just digging up some from the overcrowded eastern fence row. I said I would love to do that; it appealed to my frugality and my love of the underdog, of the overlooked. Just pick out the ones you want, I said, and tell me where you want them planted. But she didn't get around to it that year.
That was April 2010, the first time I'd been "home" since December 1996. I asked again about the trees on my next visit, a year and a half later so I could be there for the family reunion so she could show me off to the relatives. She got as far as saying she'd like a couple of redbuds, maybe, maybe over thataway — she motioned toward where the clothesline used to be — she definitely didn't want them too near the house, for the next ice storm to topple. She was 69 years old, and they would be saplings when I planted them, but that was her wish. Or maybe, she reconsidered, along the western boundary, one or two to break up the expanse between her yard and the empty acre next to it. But things were busy, my brother was home and wanted to go places, and she never made her selections.
Last September was just as busy: my brother home, the family reunion, the couple of days I wanted to spend with my stepsister across the state. But I had a drive this time, overcoming my own inertia and hers, as well. I chose a tree, one I could get to, one that was at the upper end of what I thought I could manage, and I showed her: I'm thinking that one. She didn't say no, and I got out the shovel.
It was warm and humid even in mid-September, so I didn't work during the heat of the day. I spent a couple of hours in the morning, stopping about the same time the dew dried, and then went back out near sunset, digging until I could no longer see and then maybe 15 minutes longer. It was hard, harder than I'd thought, and I usually expect the worst. The ground was solid clay and clotted with sawbriar roots, tangled like barbed wire and nearly as strong. I was concerned that I wasn't hitting many roots from the sapling, but I Googled "redbud roots" and found that they have a taproot. I pictured something as big around at the three-inch trunk, maybe several feet deep, and wondered how it would deal if I had to cut through partway down. If I got that far; I thought I might have to fly home before I ever finished, leaving a dry moat and a mound of dirt until the next visit.
But once I got past the first six inches, the sawbriar roots petered out, and without them I could get a bit of purchase on the clay. With two days left, I reached the pivotal moment, when the tree leaned a bit to one side, a bit more with the shovel as a lever, then with my boot against the trunk, rocking it farther and farther askew, more work with the shovel, more shoving, and finally I put my boot against the shovel handle and rocked that, eyes squinted, ready for it to splinter at any moment. But there was no sudden crack, just the tree tilting with a creak until the branches brushed the ground, a deeper creak from within the soil as the taproot broke free, or just broke, and then there was air below the suspended root ball.
I measured the tree while it was supine; it was 14 feet tall. The taproot was pitiful, barely an inch thick, twisted and forked as it had tried to find a path down through clay too hard even for its wooden will. I was glad I'd carved out a wide root ball, because it would need all the strength it had. I was less glad once I started trying to drag the tree and roots and earth across the acre and up the hill; it took me close to half an hour of full-out sweat-dripping cursing to get it to its destination. Planting was the easy part, even counting the ropes and stakes and pulling it upright from side after side until it only leaned a little, and that into what would be the winter wind.
There were also four other trees, smaller ones whose roots had been so close to my prize that they were all but dug up anyway. I planted two on each side of the 14-footer, each a third of the way down the hill. One was a smaller redbud, two were maples — one barely a yard high — and one was a mystery, with online research leading me to guess hickory.
I called my mother in May, the first call I'd made since I'd gotten the letter in November, the letter telling me I'd made up most of my memoir out of whole cloth. It hadn't even occurred to me to call her after the Marathon bombing, and she'd never called me to ask if I'd been affected. We didn't talk about the bombing, or the letter; it was as if she'd never sent it, as if she'd never read my story. She told me that four of the five trees had survived the winter; only the mystery tree hadn't leafed out. The big redbud had even bloomed — not a whole lot, she said, but promising for the first year. A couple of weeks later, I got my birthday card, and a note that said the mystery tree had leafed out after all.
I don't know how they've fared over the summer; I haven't had the strength to call. I don't know when I'll see them — not this year, I know — or if they'll be alive when I'm next at the house where I grew up. I don't know what my mother feels when she sees them. Loved? Cared for? Looked after? I don't know what I feel. I know that what I can give her is not what she wants. But I gave her what I could, dirt and sweat and stubbornness, and a line of fragile, stubborn sentinels who will dig as deep as they are able, doing everything they can to live. Maybe it will be enough.
-----
She said she should really plant some trees. Not that she wanted to, but people kept telling her she should. The two ageless maples that had grown near the house she'd lived in for nearly 50 years had broken in the ice storm, and now all that was left were the stumps, two feet in diameter. People told her the acre looked so bare, and to my mind they were right: the small ranch house, green siding fading into the surrounding grass, at the top of the now-treeless hill. No flowers, of course; my father thought flower beds were too much trouble, and my mother never objected, whatever her feelings. From the road, the house looked both small and ominous, shrunken and looming.
Well, I could plant trees, I said, if she could get them delivered from whatever nursery she bought them from. She said actually, she'd been thinking of just digging up some from the overcrowded eastern fence row. I said I would love to do that; it appealed to my frugality and my love of the underdog, of the overlooked. Just pick out the ones you want, I said, and tell me where you want them planted. But she didn't get around to it that year.
That was April 2010, the first time I'd been "home" since December 1996. I asked again about the trees on my next visit, a year and a half later so I could be there for the family reunion so she could show me off to the relatives. She got as far as saying she'd like a couple of redbuds, maybe, maybe over thataway — she motioned toward where the clothesline used to be — she definitely didn't want them too near the house, for the next ice storm to topple. She was 69 years old, and they would be saplings when I planted them, but that was her wish. Or maybe, she reconsidered, along the western boundary, one or two to break up the expanse between her yard and the empty acre next to it. But things were busy, my brother was home and wanted to go places, and she never made her selections.
Last September was just as busy: my brother home, the family reunion, the couple of days I wanted to spend with my stepsister across the state. But I had a drive this time, overcoming my own inertia and hers, as well. I chose a tree, one I could get to, one that was at the upper end of what I thought I could manage, and I showed her: I'm thinking that one. She didn't say no, and I got out the shovel.
It was warm and humid even in mid-September, so I didn't work during the heat of the day. I spent a couple of hours in the morning, stopping about the same time the dew dried, and then went back out near sunset, digging until I could no longer see and then maybe 15 minutes longer. It was hard, harder than I'd thought, and I usually expect the worst. The ground was solid clay and clotted with sawbriar roots, tangled like barbed wire and nearly as strong. I was concerned that I wasn't hitting many roots from the sapling, but I Googled "redbud roots" and found that they have a taproot. I pictured something as big around at the three-inch trunk, maybe several feet deep, and wondered how it would deal if I had to cut through partway down. If I got that far; I thought I might have to fly home before I ever finished, leaving a dry moat and a mound of dirt until the next visit.
But once I got past the first six inches, the sawbriar roots petered out, and without them I could get a bit of purchase on the clay. With two days left, I reached the pivotal moment, when the tree leaned a bit to one side, a bit more with the shovel as a lever, then with my boot against the trunk, rocking it farther and farther askew, more work with the shovel, more shoving, and finally I put my boot against the shovel handle and rocked that, eyes squinted, ready for it to splinter at any moment. But there was no sudden crack, just the tree tilting with a creak until the branches brushed the ground, a deeper creak from within the soil as the taproot broke free, or just broke, and then there was air below the suspended root ball.
I measured the tree while it was supine; it was 14 feet tall. The taproot was pitiful, barely an inch thick, twisted and forked as it had tried to find a path down through clay too hard even for its wooden will. I was glad I'd carved out a wide root ball, because it would need all the strength it had. I was less glad once I started trying to drag the tree and roots and earth across the acre and up the hill; it took me close to half an hour of full-out sweat-dripping cursing to get it to its destination. Planting was the easy part, even counting the ropes and stakes and pulling it upright from side after side until it only leaned a little, and that into what would be the winter wind.
There were also four other trees, smaller ones whose roots had been so close to my prize that they were all but dug up anyway. I planted two on each side of the 14-footer, each a third of the way down the hill. One was a smaller redbud, two were maples — one barely a yard high — and one was a mystery, with online research leading me to guess hickory.
I called my mother in May, the first call I'd made since I'd gotten the letter in November, the letter telling me I'd made up most of my memoir out of whole cloth. It hadn't even occurred to me to call her after the Marathon bombing, and she'd never called me to ask if I'd been affected. We didn't talk about the bombing, or the letter; it was as if she'd never sent it, as if she'd never read my story. She told me that four of the five trees had survived the winter; only the mystery tree hadn't leafed out. The big redbud had even bloomed — not a whole lot, she said, but promising for the first year. A couple of weeks later, I got my birthday card, and a note that said the mystery tree had leafed out after all.
I don't know how they've fared over the summer; I haven't had the strength to call. I don't know when I'll see them — not this year, I know — or if they'll be alive when I'm next at the house where I grew up. I don't know what my mother feels when she sees them. Loved? Cared for? Looked after? I don't know what I feel. I know that what I can give her is not what she wants. But I gave her what I could, dirt and sweat and stubbornness, and a line of fragile, stubborn sentinels who will dig as deep as they are able, doing everything they can to live. Maybe it will be enough.
