By Katrina Rudd
To the dying Druid Oak,
My father raised me on trees like you. He worked as a forester. Every paycheck came from the fungal sap-blood of white, amber Oak, green Pine, and blue Spruce. We have pictures of us kids when we were eleven, eight and six, standing in your milky, hollow, anciently hallowed trunk, laughing. We would giggle and open our tiny mouths to silent screaming and mock-terror as we pretended your empty body was swallowing us whole.
Three kids, all growing up in Oregon’s forest fairy land.
I wanted you to know about my father, and my siblings, old Druid Oak, because I want you to understand: there are humans who walk past your trunk, dragging their fingers across your white bark; there are humans who stare up at your umbrella of branches, mouth open, breathing in the soil-smell and aged wood; there are humans who can’t help themselves: they pass you but pause to look back.
I thought you should know, we care.
To the Charlie Brown Christmas tree,
At Christmas we celebrated, and we kept you included. Every year meant a trip to the Nobles and Pines and to the sparse, thin trees my parents adored. Last year, like every year, we cut your trunk and took you home; we decorated you from top to toe. And you held yourself high and dignified despite your delicate frame. You watched as we laughed and danced to Christmas songs and talked of the Nativity story. I like to think the star on your head shone brighter when we read Luke, chapters one and two.
I thought you should know, we’re grateful.
To the Sycamore Gap tree,
I mourn for you. I went to visit you on Hadrien’s Wall last year. I walked along, anxiously awaiting the sight of your trunk, the scene I dreaded: you, flat and sawn. You were forced down, yanked out, split into pieces for political rebellion. I took a picture with you and noted the juvenile growth shooting up from your base. Still alive; enduring old age, but still young inside. I hope, according to my immortal spirit, to visit you again in two-hundred years and thank you for coming back.
I thought you should know, I noticed you.
To all the slumping, dreary, care-worn trees,
When I brought my boyfriend (now fiancé) home to visit my parents, he asked me in private what word described my family best. I replied, “trees.” My beloved seemed confused at first, but it became clear when he met my family. We talk about trees a lot. We don’t worship them (that is strictly for God), but we appreciate His creations.
We build our houses with your bodies; what reverence you are due! What gratitude we give to food and forget the wooden door that daily blocks the wind, the intruder, and the rain. What delights there are in climbing your branches and feeling the wind in my hair.
What giggles saunter through me as my siblings chase me around your trunk. Your shade on hot summer days makes my space in this world a refuge; the rustle of leaves as Autumn comes calling, make my world an old, shifting song.
Like manna from heaven, we grow on your age and your life: you warm us by the sacrifice of your bodies as we read by the light of your last, leftover particles. By you, birds perch and live in homes split from your skin. By you, bears relieve the scratchiness bugging their backs. By you, spiders build their roosts and capture the fleeing fly. By you, little boys and girls can climb higher than playgrounds permit to catch the sun and touch the sky.
To all those alone on Christmas, especially the slumping ones,
I can’t get you out of my mind. When I was just twenty-one years old, living in the Patagonia, that beautiful Argentine desert, my body stopped doing what I asked. I became ill. All I could do was hobble—hobble and struggle up my apartment stairs, along dirt roads, and down bus steps. Shuffling up stairs made my heart feel wild, like a frantic hummingbird in a cage. It certainly felt that way.
So I can’t get you out of my mind, because I’ve been alone on Christmas too, while sick, with an empty fridge, holes in my shoes, and limp-for-a-body. I lost faith and feared the future. I felt saggy and shaggy, and slumped. I imagined myself with rotting roots, too weak to sustain my active mind. I imagined my leaves withering and shriveling, like human skin wrinkling. I imagined my visage pale, the only color left in my green eyes—the final relic, the last homage to my forest home. The desert was beautiful, but I had to go back, back to Oregon and drink from green mountains and spring cow pastures.
Old or young, when your body gives out, you want to give up. Old or young, when your body spits fire, your joints ache and burn; it becomes all you can think about, all you can talk about. And when the healthy don’t listen to your moaning trunk or your withered leaves, it’s because their bodies don’t know the pain and the isolation yet. “It’s okay,” you whisper, but you can’t help feeling lonely, especially when everyone from your generation is gone and your children (although you love them dearly, and they love you) have uncomprehending ears. But all the same, their visit is the best part of your week, and deservedly so. It’s still good even if it isn’t perfect.
Our neighbors were good at showing up on Christmas. We call them José and Mamacita (she would have no other name). They came from Mexico fifty-something years before and raised their kids, then watched their little flock take flight. They are also passionate carolers (my mother’s favorite kind of people). I always thought they would stop coming when he started walking with a cane, and she had to use a wheelchair. But every year, just outside my window I would hear them singing, “Prospero año y felicidad” (prosperous year and happiness).
Spirit to spirit, I want you to feel what I mean when I say my father raised me on trees: when we first moved into my childhood home, Dad gave us a backyard with yearling trees he planted, fresh along the fence line. And later, when the trees holding our treehouse began to rot, I felt my childhood ending, but still, I remember laying in the summer grass, staring up at the sky, the clouds blocked by other trees and leaves, and feeling at peace.
And when my father died, José and Mamacita, with heads full of white hair and wrinkling eyes, were the branches that bore my mother up and filled our mourning minds with silly tales and belly-ache jokes. Our waning eyes turned to crescent lights beaming, even in the night. And when sweet Mamacita’s back hurt too bad to get out of bed, we grew into their home, taking turns at the house.
I remember staying the night at your place, selfishly hoping you would make it until Christmas, so we could hear one last carol.
You’ve got to know, then, that Dad raised me, to care, to be grateful, to notice, and to remember you.
And I do.
All my love,
Marisol
Katrina Rudd is an Editing and Publishing student at BYU with a minor in Creative Writing.
