To Life!

It's that time of year.... Seasons converge, mornings and evenings are cool, yet the sun feels warm in the afternoon, games on television, football, basketball both college and pro.

The stores are selling decorations, and Christmas things. Lights, and baubles, and faux greenery. It is still too early for the real greens, lined up like soldiers, in parking lots, waiting for the right family to choose them....

And yet, it's still warm, still sunny, still November....or at least the end of it.

Bright and early this morning, as promised, my trees arrived. No, not Christmas trees; Raymond Ash trees. Tall and skinny, with green and purple leaves. New trees. New promises. New lives.

It has been more than a year since I stood in the living room, looking out the window, as the mighty Modesto Ash trees in the front yard crashed to the ground, felled by a chain saw. I remember, clearly, the pain I felt. The horror of not only having a “friend” die, but of having to witness it, too.

I never doubted that I would replace those trees. I fully expected to do it much sooner than now. But time and circumstances have come together: now is the time, and those sticks in the front yard are the trees. Perhaps there are other trees, other places, other times, but this just feels right.

I remember when my fallen friends were planted. I was five years old. I don't remember where my parents bought those trees but they, too, arrived on the back of a nursery truck. They sat in the yard, in their nursery containers, waiting patiently for Daddy to plant them.

And they were sticks, too.....all those years ago.

Funny, before they were cut down, I couldn't put my arms all the way around my friends. They had grown that much. But then, it was half a century later, too....

As I grew, the trees grew. From sticks to monuments. Monuments to time and patience and inevitability. And then, inevitably, they grew old, and weak, and had to come down.

Their life mimicked mine. They lived through the same family milestones that I did. The same history that I did. Tall, steadfast, comforting. No wonder it was so hard to lose them.

And now, the cycle begins again. The new trees are here. They will be planted today, and nourished, and encouraged to grow. Yet, it will be different. It dawns on me that, unlike before, I will not be around when these trees are half a century old. I will not sit in their shade and listen to their leaves rustle in the gentle breeze.

No, these are not my trees. We will not grow old together. These trees are my belief....

In the future.