As I write this, trees both young and old are falling outside my office window. Creaking and crashing down, they are rammed by two large bulldozers, a loud machine-hum is audible through the whole house. The dozers, one bright yellow and one hunter green, move about emotionless and focused like hermit crabs demolishing everything in their paths. Dust and tree chips fly.
Goodbye, slippery elm, I say out loud to myself. Only my books hear me. I loved that tree. In the short winter sunset, her dead leaves cast a rose pink glow against the dark backdrop of evergreens.
In a dramatic swing down and a flurry of woodchips and machine, the tree falls and cracks. The bulldozer plows forth.
The tree is crushed.
Our neighbors are clearing everything within 35 feet of our property line for an electric line and a road to the back of their property. These plans threaten our largest, eldest pine tree, who sits within ten feet of the forthcoming electric line.
The pine needles underneath make the most beautiful carpet. We had plans to party under that tree.
The grand old tree’s fate is likely to be completely out of our control. The tree will likely be cut down.
We are crushed.
Matt rants and raves about the neighbors. He’s not one to rant nor rave usually, but trees really do something for him. He spent many nights after work last summer transporting barrels of water from the house to the pine, which was losing its needles at an alarming rate due to the drought.
The tree lived that time.
“Well,” I sigh, “all we can do is wait and see what the electric company says after their assessment. I refuse to spend emotional energy on this right now, I have too much to do,” I huff with the baby on my hip.
The truth is I don’t know what to do. There is nothing else to do.
I keep thinking of the time my father, riding his bike with my mom and their friends, was plowed by a drunk driver in a truck.
He was simply in the wrong place at the exact wrong time.
He was wearing his helmet and his bright bike shirt. That jersey shirt would be shredded by the pavement and then cut off of him at the hospital, and later I would fish it from a pile of his belongings that arrived back from the hospital, my mother screaming at the sight of it, and I’d stash it away.
The night of the accident, I lay in my parent’s guest room howling with tears, waiting for the next call, wondering if Dad would make it through the surgeries and through the night. I couldn’t go to the hospital because of the pandemic protocol.
My parents’ new kitten curled up on my chest and I stared at the popcorn ceiling.
There was nothing to do.
Dad never stopped working. Even in the rehab hospital, he was on the phone and running numbers and contracts. My brother ran his company from the other end of the line. Some people might judge that, but I was happy he had something to focus on beyond the pain and frustration.
While he was in rehab, Mom and I would make soup for dinner and cry into our bowls.
Thank God he was wearing his helmet, she sobbed. Thank God the bike flipped up on top of the truck and not under it.
Thank God he wasn’t crushed.
Fate is that which we cannot control. It is everything that is meant for us, the great equalizer, the blessed serendipity and the random tragedy.
My spiritual practice these days is amor fati, to love my fate.
I am challenged nearly every moment with this practice. The baby falls down and bumps her head. The trees and the birds’ nests are cleared for a road. Matt gets in his car everyday and drives past the spot where we saw a fatal accident. Dad has mysterious health issues from the hit-and-run.
The fear swirls my thoughts. And sometimes in the midst, I remember: I can surrender. I take a deep breath and let myself soften, and sometimes I cry into the hardness of life and I say thank God for our other trees, thank God Matt made it home.
Thank God for now.
Beautiful, refreshing, deeply sad and real. Thank you for this — its substance feels truly satisfying to perch on and grasp, considering we’re all usually floating in an endless & lukewarm sea of banality.
Your words brought tears to my eyes. You are a good writer, might I even say a great one. When I sit and read the words, I find myself hungry for the next sentence. Keep your stories coming please. You have a gift.