California Oaks

I think the tree in my backyard may be a metaphor for my life or, at least, a metaphor for my life as it currently stands. It keeps shedding limbs – great, gigantic limbs that crash through the picket fence and reduce the wooden picnic table to splinters. My landlord texted me the first time it happened. “Don’t let your kids outside,” he wrote. “A large limb fell and is wedged in lower branches. It is potentially dangerous.”

I was sitting at my kitchen table the other morning when it happened again- only, this time,  two of the limbs fell. As is the tendency for California oaks, the limbs were each dense, gnarled and twisted. At some point in time, they became enmeshed – tangled in a knotted, kinked line. I think this arrangement worked wonders in terms of each separate limb taking it in turns to first support and then be supported by the other; they had a co-dependent relationship. And apparently the agreement worked well for quite some time. Those particular limbs grew long and tall together, sprouting green, healthy leaves year after year after year.

But then shit happened, as shit does. Too many scorching summers and dry winters. Too long of a wind storm, too much flash flooding. Or perhaps, just too much weight. The limbs had feasted together for a long time – and successfully so. But at last they had gorged too much, grown too heavy. In the end, the trunk of the tree - the original root being - could no longer sustain this codependent arrangement, and so she shed it. Dropped it clear to the ground in a smashing crash that sent the squirrels shrieking and my cat peeling off toward the crawl space beneath my house as though her very life depended on it (which, of course, it did).  

One week later and the mess in the back yard has been tidied up – an arborist came and, after breaking the huge, discarded limbs into smaller hunks, passed them through the wood chipper. My landlord appeared with new lumber, nails and hammer, and mended the picket fence. The squirrels returned and resumed their chattering while the cat, after several hours of hiding, finally dared to poke her nose out from beneath the crawl space.

The tree, rooted to her spot, appeared no worse the wear for having so violently ejected an arm. Her remaining limbs all looked healthy -  strong, resilient, defiantly green. I suspect that she felt considerably lighter – as though she had finally shed a thick woolen coat that had grown sodden and heavy with rain. I bet she felt younger. I imagine that she felt as though she were wearing a light, summery dress that playfully sashayed about her ankles.

And yet this morning, when I groped my way to the coffee maker in the early dawn light, I looked out the back kitchen window to see that yet another limb had dropped (though, mercifully, a much smaller one – no splintered picnic tables or fences with gaping holes this time around).  Apparently she was not done with her shedding. The summer dress was a bit too heavy yet.

Three times now within the span of as many months, and the tree continues to reject some of its parts and pieces. I texted my landlord to ask if he thought the tree would finally collapse. No, he texted back, the tree won’t fall. She’s been there for years and she’ll remain there for several years still. This is cyclical shedding - it’s what California oaks do.

I hope to God that he’s right, because I sure as hell don’t want to be sitting beneath that oak if it were ever to fall. But, more importantly, I hope that I will be like that tree. I hope that I am like her already. That, despite all the bits and pieces of my own life that I have shed this last year (a house, an imbalanced relationship, a career, a sister who died tragically young) that I will stay rooted, remain grounded, continue standing upright. Fed and nourished by my previous union with those bits and pieces that once reached toward the sunlight on my/our behalf, yet wise enough to know when something has become too heavy, too burdened with its own density, to continue to carry.

Cyclical shedding may not be entirely bad. Sometimes we can drop the heavy loads and see how life feels with a little less weight, a little less density. Was it Cheryl Strayed who said that we don’t always need to carry all those cumbersome rocks in our backpacks? We can set them down – lovingly, gratefully – and still have the stamina to remain rooted, still have the strength to stand tall. In fact, we might discover that we can stretch a little further still.