I remember a tree
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
By Fiona Jones
PROMPT—Never will I forget ...
I remember a tree.
Maybe I should pause here for a few moments while you remember a tree too. It shaded you, or gave you apples; it amazed you with its beauty, or resembled a gnarling monster of the forest that might speak if you held yourself still enough. One way or another, everyone remembers a tree. If you live on Planet Earth, you remember a tree. If you have reached adulthood psychologically whole or anywhere thereabouts, there’s a tree in there somewhere.
There were various trees in the back garden of the house where I was born. I had two sisters older than me and one sister too young to play with. The three of us who spent long days shut out in the garden all had the same favorite tree: a young birch or hazel, I think, with a misshapen lower trunk that formed a step for toddling feet. You were off the ground, up (a few inches) in a tree that was slender enough to wobble and shake as you proudly, rather violently, charioteered it.
When it was time to move house, my father dug up our tree and tried to replant it in the new and smaller garden. It died. But he had made the attempt, and I will always remember that. For one thing, he must have listened to our chatter and watched our games. For another, he did what he could when he had a bad back and he already carried all the stresses of moving house with four tiny children and another on the way. For another thing… well, it was symbolic: he tried to protect us from unhappiness, and he could not.
Some things are never entirely a failure. Families have troubles; some families have more than their share of troubles; and he could not protect us from hunger, cold and cruelty, in the following years—but we still remember our little tree, and his attempt at kindness and strength. And there have been other trees since. Oaks bent enough to sit in, beeches with branches long enough to touch the ground. Storm-broken trees that somehow stay alive. My second sister found her career in forestry. I had two children, and spent long times outdoors with them. When my first son was five months old, on the first warm afternoon of spring, I put him in the garden and watched him staring intently at the edging of trees against sky—deriving, no doubt, some sort of mathematical satisfaction from the fractal patterning of green upon blue. (He is grown up now, and a mathematical researcher who knows what trees do with chemistry, physics and math.)
There were Dark Trees near where we lived: twisted yews that my children decided had owls living in them. There was a Giant Tree, the Crossford Sycamore, girthy enough that if you lost sight of your Muppy you had to split up and circle the tree to find her again. There were fallen trees and half-fallen trees that got used as “dens”, and strong-boughed trees to which we attached home-made swings and hammocks. There was a Scary Tree, an oak that had nearly died but gradually returned to life, a mixture of green and clawing bare grey. There were wild apple trees that yielded fruit the size of golf balls, and horse chestnut trees that supplied us with conkers. There was a magnificent hollow tree on the golf course, big enough to step inside. There was a narrow patch of trees alongside Waggon Road that my sons called the Hundred-Acre Woods. When my younger son was old enough to walk home by himself, he used to save a bit of his lunch to make a little solo picnic, lying under a tree out of sight from the crowded play park.
Will my children remember their trees when life gets tough? Well, the signs so far are good. The first time I visited my son in Manchester, all he wanted to do was drive out of the city and find somewhere open to walk. My other son stays in a more rural area, and has explored all the steep, narrow trod-paths in and out of the nearby Roslin Glen. “They’ll be OK,” I tell myself, touching wood, not superstitiously but just because I believe in trees.
I asked my sons, the other day, to remember a tree. They talked about the acorn that got collected and played with, planted in a pot and forgotten, discovered a summer or two later, pulled around the garden and slopped with water, and finally transplanted near a wall, halfway along the Hundred-Acre Wood. Evidently they remember its exact location better than I do, because they say they’ve searched for it with the tiny yellow man on Google Maps, and it’s still visible from the road, peeping up above the stone wall.
And I’m just glad they both remember trees.
Fiona M Jones writes short, dark-themed fiction and nature-themed nonfiction. Her work is published in literary magazines and anthologies everywhere except Antarctica. Fiona writes from Kelso, Scotland.
