One Tree

Re-imagining an old post I wrote about a beloved tree (2010)

I’m at my kitchen table with lukewarm coffee. Jackie’s wet paw prints lead to the bay window, but there’s no Jackie visible. House finches preen and warble between blooms on the branches.

The finches go suddenly silent. They hear it first and flush to the sky. My ear picks up the whirring of a motor …  then roar, metal on metal, thundering. It’s the annual tree trimming and wood chipper

I punch in the city’s tree division. ‘Can your trimmers cut later in the season, because, you know, bird nests?’

She gives me the same answer as every year: the overhead wires, safety, no options.

I walk half a block to the Fargo scene. The cutters are shoving massive branches into the chipper. We exchange smiles and I wave. I ask if they can make sure to look for tiny hummingbird nests. I hand over my contact info with a note: “in case you find baby birds.”

Back at our second-story window above Berkeley, Jackie wraps around my legs like she’s weaving a cat’s cradle. Through the glass I look again at the familiar parasol, an explosion of white flowers and swallowtail butterflies: our California buckeye tree. 

In a spring like this, our tree sends jasmine-plumeria sweetness into our apartment. It’s lush with green buds and baubles, and bird song. The finches are back and they cock their heads. Are they seeing me? Or, their reflections? Later I hear the tap tap of an Orange-crowned Warbler who does, in fact, see his reflection. He returns again to fight off the intruder. 

Late summer, the baubles turn brown and tumble down the trunk. I watch squirrels grappling with these uncrackable spheres, but I never witness a squirrel gnaw open a buckeye pod.

One autumn night, before the buckeye sheds its brown and gold, I open the bedroom window and see a spiral of a tail wrapped around a branch. An opossum, draped across the branch, dozes in a leafy hammock.

In winter when the nubby limbs are barren of everything except their silver sheen, I notice a California scrub jay spying on the squirrel below. The squirrel digs a hole for a nut, then leaps away. The jay zeroes in on the spot, digs out the nut, then caches it in a rain gutter. From a nearby utility pole, a crow sees the jay, then flies over steals the nut, tucking it a divot on the pole.

The wood chipper is still gnashing metal half a block away. I close the window. The jasmine-plumeria scent infuses the room.

If this tree were to ever meet a wood chipper, how could I wake expecting it to be there there, expecting its spray of light and shadows against our wall, and then find only empty sky? How could I ever close that window again without pushing aside the new little buds creeping in around the frame? They don’t know yet to bend away. How could Hugh and I sit with our morning coffee and share distant dreams without the furious chatter of the squirrel who just spotted Jackie inside pane? 

It would be just the frame, just the glass, just us. And only phantom blooms on the wall where real shadows used to play.