“Weep for the Willow”

I have a thing about trees. Always have. When I was a kid attending Lincoln Elementary in Warren, Ohio, our class had to memorize Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” We then recited it for the annual Arbor Day observance during which we planted a sapling of some sort along the drive leading up to the school, each of us taking a turn shoveling dirt into the hole that had been dug by our janitor.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

 A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

 Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

I have a list of all-time favorite trees. I’m sure you can bring to mind your own. My top five:

5. The venerable live oak in the side yard of Jennie’s late aunt and uncle’s home on the Carolina coast. With moss hanging from its hoary branches like so much tinsel, it had an old rope swing hung from its branches on which generations of children begged their parents to push them (“Higher!”). Prevailer over hurricanes. Provider of shade, solace, and simple pleasure. An old friend.

4. The maple in our front yard. When in full autumn finery, it is a yellow-gold burning bush that causes passing motorists to stop and take cell phone photos of its brilliance. I write in the second story canopy of its leaves, hence the name of my writer’s den – The Maple Loft.   

3. Another live oak, this one’s wide canopy occupying center stage in an open swath of grass on the grounds of Mepkin Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in the lowlands of South Carolina. I spent several days of silence there during my first sabbatical in 1997. Early on, I was drawn to the stately old tree and spent time each day sitting against its wide trunk savoring psalms.

2. The Bible’s trees. Genesis begins by telling us about the Garden of Eden and “the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in its midst (Gen 2:9). Elijah fell asleep under a broom tree only to be awakened by an angel with some room service bread and water saying, “Arise and eat.” Then there’s “Zaccheaus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he / He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see.” And the Scriptures end in Revelation by again mentioning “the tree of life… yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:2). And smack dab in the middle of the Bible is planted the psalms, the first of which has a tree planted in the middle of it as a metaphor for a life deeply rooted in the good, right, and true: “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season (Psalm 1:1-3)”

1. The weeping willow in the backyard of my childhood home. Its branches were perfectly arranged for single-digit-year-old kids to climb up into its highest boughs. So, climb we did. My backyard neighbor buddy Mick and I scaled its heights daily, sat in the crooks of its branches hammock-like, and talked. We built a friendship that endures to this day. We’ve never not known each other, we say. He called me a few weeks ago from the emergency room and his sister called the next day from Tulsa to make sure I knew he was hospitalized. Such is the friendship forged in the willow.    

Our mothers would spot us high up in the nether reaches of the willow and shout from their back stoops, “You boys come down right this minute before you fall and break your necks!” I did fall once. Didn’t break my neck, but I did a number on my back when I landed splat on an exposed root. My recollection is I was unable to move. The fall knocked the wind out of me and maybe more. Mick climbed down quickly, ran to the back screen door of our house and got my mother. She carried me into the house draped across her extended arms and laid me in bed. I was good to go in an hour or so. But I wonder if my lower back pain these past fifteen years may not have been predicated by that fall. 

Then there was the time we got up too high and were afraid to move. Whereupon Mick’s brother Bob, thirteen years older than us, an upperclassman in high school, was summoned. He climbed the tree, plucked us from our perches one at a time, tucked us under an arm, and returned us each to terra firma. 

A couple years ago, Mick called to tell me Bob had returned to northeast Ohio after a lifetime in the San Francisco Bay Area. In his early eighties with no children or friends to care for him – rather hapless and helpless, sadly – he turned to his little brother for end-of-life care. Our one-time rescuer had to be rescued. And was. Mick plucked his aged brother up in arms of mercy and arranged for his comfort and care until his death.

From the tree, Mick and I also engaged in espionage. We spied on the Vennetti sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, in their backyard two houses down. They were the first two children of what would be twelve in that devout Catholic family – don’t ask me how they raised that flock in a 1,350 square foot house. Mick and I would shout volleys to them from the crow’s nest of our pirate ship tree until they coaxed us down to come over and play.   

But beyond espionage, adventure, and companionship, the tree was foremost for me a source of refuge, solitude, and consolation. In moments of familial dysfunction, that tree was a safe place. A sanctuary. A refuge. “A very present help in times of trouble” (Psalm 46:1). It and its Creator (and mine) were always there for me, its branches and boughs spread wide to receive and hold me. Nature’s capacity for providing solace. 

Mick called me a few years ago to say the current owners of the house had cut down the willow to extend their garage.

Need I say more?

Essays like this are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree.