“Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky,
How beautiful it is?
All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness
There is a poem, there is a song.”
— Krishnamurti
My mother would have celebrated her 87th birthday last week, and reading the above words reminds me of something she said once not long after we’d bought this place. We were standing on the back porch looking out over the woods, and I, still dressed in my new homeowner’s pridefulness, pointed out trees to her that I thought should come down.
One in particular stood behind the garage on a small rise. It had once been a magnificent oak but had long since been reduced to a towering dead trunk full of woodpecker holes and other assorted blemishes. My opinion at the time was that its state of advanced decay was unattractive against the backdrop of healthier, fully leafed trees and that cutting it down would greatly improve things.
My mother looked at it awhile and then said, “Why do you want to cut it down? Don’t you see how it adds to the view, because it’s different from all the others? It breaks up all the green, and it belongs there just as much as the other trees do.”
Now, my mother’s curriculum vitae would hardly have been impressive, listing simply the eight years she’d spent during the 1930s in what was then called grammar school. She never went to high school, but went right to work in the mills where she eventually met my father. We had few, if any, books in the house during my childhood, and those I managed to acquire over the years were borrowed from the local public library or the school library. My mother had few hobbies to speak of, yet she was resourceful and creative in ways that would be hard to describe. In later years, after my father died, she took up very simple knitting and other projects that involved yarn or beads, and despite the fact that she lived alone, she never lost her love of cooking and baking. Both my parents were very private people and shared with us, my sister and me, just what they felt children should be privy to and nothing more. They were both always on their best behavior around us, and although we had our share of family quarrels, they both strove to keep their Sunday faces on for us at all times.
I ultimately cut that tree down, and now, of course, wish I hadn’t. Because in the years I’ve been here, I have come to understand what my mother meant that day, that although words like “contrast” and “interest” and “values” would not have occurred to her, something else had, something that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see. She had the sight that I’ve often felt I lack at times, and conveyed her perceptions the best way she could. She saw that tree, not only with her eyes, but with her heart, and it is that ability that I have striven to hone here in the years since that day. My mother never went beyond the eighth grade, yet her vision was such that she understood fully why that dead tree should be left standing.
A few months after she died, I found the courage to go through what few things she’d left behind in the way of papers and documents. I found a spiral notebook in which she’d compiled lists of things, jotted down recipes, or noted something she’d seen on television or heard on the radio. She loved Julio Iglesias and country music, watched “Frasier” religiously and never missed the television Mass on Sunday mornings. She was often up, even in later years, at 4 a.m. baking muffins of which she’d keep just a couple and give the rest to us. And even in the end, when illness had all but consumed her, she urged me to call her if I ever needed her.
None of us can ever know who our parents were before we entered their lives, because the birth of a child changes things, and people, for all time. And unless a parent is forthcoming and articulate with his or her history, there’s really no way to get a feel for who he or she was before we came along. So both my parents, but particularly my mother, were mysteries to us, and it was not until after she’d died that I would get a glimpse of who she was, though even that remains sketchy at best.
I have preserved for all time that moment with her on the back porch, gazing out across the autumn woods, when this plain, humble woman displayed a wisdom far beyond that of which even she might have believed herself capable. Since then, I’ve left a few other dead or dying trees standing in memory of her, because she would think they look just fine right where they are. My mother saw in an instant that day the beauty of a tree whose few remaining branches stood naked against the sky. She saw the poetry, heard the song, and continues to inspire me to do the same.
— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, can be reached via e-mail at rlovejoy84253@roadrunner.com.
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