Hope is a Tree
Yesterday, we had strong winds and tornado warnings all over our area. This morning, trees are down everywhere.
To listen to this post:
This morning, I saw my first chipping sparrow of the season in the back yard. We have these little sprites year-round in West Virginia, but I typically do not see them in my yard until breeding season. I watched the little one through my binoculars as he visited my seed feeder, then light on a nearby maple branch. One of the Carolina chickadees who is checking out my nesting box perched above him, giving the interloper a good scolding. It made me smile.
It’s crazy, really, the giddy feeling I get when an unfamiliar visits my little bird sanctuary. This is the time of year that I get little done around the house on my days off because I loathe to move away from the window.
Yesterday, we had tornado warnings all over the area. I was at work and the sirens went off loud enough to hear deep in the belly of the hospital. The patients huddled together on the unit, wide-eyed and alert. I skirted in between them, giving them words to anchor. But then one of them gave me a smile that anchored me. She whispered hope into the halls.
Last night, she said, I dreamed that I was back home… and I was so happy that I danced!
She chuckled at the thought, and we all chuckled with her. But there was another whose wife was crying outside the door of his room and I pressed gently on her shoulder as I walked by. Hope is slowly slipping away and I can’t dream it back.
When I left work for the day, it was still raining but the wind had died down. Scattered leaves were stuck to the sidewalk like licked envelopes. I wondered about the messages folded underneath—what kind of secrets had soles walked away from on these streets?
When I pulled into our neighborhood, I saw my neighbor’s pear tree was split down the middle. I remembered when the same happened to us—how sad I was to watch that tree come down. I remembered standing at the window with tears in my eyes and watching the tree removal service do their work. All I could think about was the day that tree was planted. Me, just home from the hospital and a brand-new babe in the crib. How I stood at that same window and watched that tree go in the ground.
So much hope planted right there. So many years and so many dreams ago. I think of the me back then and feel a twinge of sorrow. Life hasn’t exactly gone the way I thought it would back then.
That memory made me quiet as I drove past my neighbor’s broken tree. Tree-planting, garden-making—these are acts of faith, of hope. When Abraham claimed the land in Beersheba, Genesis 21 tells us that he planted a tamarisk tree.
A tamarisk tree. A tree that spreads out over the years, providing much needed shade in that harsh region. The tree was his hope, planted for future generations.
This morning, there must be many tears because there are trees down everywhere and many folks are without electricity. All the windows in the house are plastered with pink maple samaras, but the trees are still full of them too. The storms seem to have made the birds hungry and I watch the bustle around the feeders. The American goldfinches are almost completely transitioned from their gray-green garb of winter to their bright yellows. The Northern cardinals chase each other through the trees. So many white-throated sparrows hop around the ground looking for fallen seeds. Two gray squirrels are contortionists—robbing the small black oil sunflower feeder I have dangling from a sapling. Not a sign of that visiting chipping sparrow.
The yellow tulips are still on the dinner table but my heart cannot summon a feeling of resurrection. I look out front where our pear tree used to be. Now, a flowering crab tree stands strong in her place. I planted it to draw in the cedar waxwings, aware of how they love the little crabapples that dangle from the branches over long seasons. I watch the pink blossoms bend in the breeze and for some reason it makes me think of my patient—her dream.
Hope is kindled in the swaying branches of a crabapple tree.
I know that hope is something that can be planted. Cultivated. Like a tamarisk tree. Like a crabapple tree. Or a bird sanctuary. I watch the house finches shelter in the swaying limbs of my flowering crabtree and I take this tiny seed of hope, and I go looking for water.
And it makes me want to dance.
You take me on such beautiful journeys. Your reminder that hope can be cultivated makes me feel so much better about this election year and the unrest that may be coming. Hate-mongering that results in insurrection is a carefully constructed world. And if that kind of world can be built via deliberate cultivation, then it means my neighbors and I can build a world full of love, mutual respect and peace. Deepest gratitude for your world-building work, Laura.
We live in an area of SW Florida that's been hit hard by hurricanes in recent years. The house survived with minimal damage, but the trees on our surrounding 5 acres have been less fortunate. And each time it has broken my heart.
Over recent months, my husband has slowly been burning the stumps that remain from the trees that did not survive. But just yesterday I stood at the guest bedroom window and admired the sweetgum trees and how you'd never know, if you weren't here during Hurricane Irma, how severely they had to be pruned back. I probably should have danced.
Such a lovely post, as always, Laura.
We do need to cultivate hope. Sometimes we just need to give it more time.