wherein a family of treehuggers loses a love.
background:
the sisterbear and i got this from my mom a week ago, with the subject "sad tree news :-("
In the next couple of weeks we have to say goodbye to our maple tree in front. It is not recovering from the storm damage, and its branches are on the house next door. I'm very sorry! I was mad at my parents for years for cutting down a tree in our back yard, and never thought I would have to order a tree execution! Love and miss you both!
i did like i do with bad news, and freekt, then scooted right into denial. that up there is a pretty pleasant little cocktail of cute and ridiculous, but the truth is, that tree was my BUSINESS. when i was wee and we spent exponentially more time on our front porch than in the living room when it was warm, i used to sneakily leave the squirrels triscuits with peanut butter in the wide crook of its trunk right by the railing (theyd eat the peanut butter, leave the cracker--this amused me every. time.) i had many an awkward photo shoot under its endless branches rocking the limited too like me and my equally awkward middle school companion were The Hotness. i used to follow its roots through the front lawn and just be all, whoa, trees. i imagined climbing out and in and up in it, until i saw the sky and the neighborhood and all of it below me. i wanted to get to that part of the canopy that hung over our street and looked like a world unto itself, where i used to look up towards on sleepy summer late afternoons when things were draped in that light that makes everything just as youve wanted and expected, a kind of familiarity that only lasts an hour, and imagine my dad walking through there as he came home smelling like workclothes and july, instead of the sidewalk below. when i moved up to the attic it made my room a tree house. when i walked into my room the first thing my eyes always found was green, green, green. it shook in the wind and so it shook my windows and teamed up with the moon to throw wild shadows around my room on snowy nights and i felt more safe then than ever. we call it "The Maple" and it is ours.
anyway, the other day my dad sent this:
To both of our sweet ladies, the attached will seem as bitterwseet as it does to us. Sadly, our beloved Norway Maple from the front of our property came down March 11, 2009. She just couldn't come back from the insults of October 2006. Poor thing.
She was suffering, so this is probably for the best. We already miss her.
We wanted you to see this photo before the shock of seeing it in person. Sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings, girls.
and this:
oof.
shes seen it all, including the time they had to like, fucking airlift our new couch and bring it through the porch door because our downstairs one was too narrow. shes watched our old messy chaotic little house rattle with wind and shouts and hurt and slow to a kind of peace i cant find anywhere else. shes the Maple. shes home. she did good.
other non-tree things, mostly about wordz:
-i think jan and i may have talked through the block im having with this whole "loss" piece. the thing is, since zeroing in on the whole how loss has/does function for me thing, ive been obssessed with, but in a very pre-writing haphazard note taking kind of way, so that by the time i go to write, im overwhelmed already, and already need a break from it. it doesnt help that ive been submerging myself in didion, in her words and her rhythm and the intricacies of how she structures everything, and she makes me feel like yeah creative nonfiction! one second, and holyfuck shes so perfect, i cant write, omgshesoperfecticantwrite the next. (god that woman only gets better with time. the intro to the ginormous collection i bought that feels too pretty to even write in, and normally i like my books good and beat up, is baller, and says something about how the space around her words on the page is even more interesting than it should be. truth.)
-we also talked about how writing is extra tricky now because you know too much. nothing was evidence of that more than at work this morning, when annie tested out this thesis statement exercise shes doing at an ed conference soon and i got so over-involved i couldnt even really do what she asked. its like, for 8th graders.
-my peace corps essays will be the end of me, and i think the phrase "motivation statement" can now make me gag on cue.
-one track mind is still currently set to voracious blog-reading and The Future.
its time to go do a lot of things, and then go to panama. bye!
the sisterbear and i got this from my mom a week ago, with the subject "sad tree news :-("
In the next couple of weeks we have to say goodbye to our maple tree in front. It is not recovering from the storm damage, and its branches are on the house next door. I'm very sorry! I was mad at my parents for years for cutting down a tree in our back yard, and never thought I would have to order a tree execution! Love and miss you both!
i did like i do with bad news, and freekt, then scooted right into denial. that up there is a pretty pleasant little cocktail of cute and ridiculous, but the truth is, that tree was my BUSINESS. when i was wee and we spent exponentially more time on our front porch than in the living room when it was warm, i used to sneakily leave the squirrels triscuits with peanut butter in the wide crook of its trunk right by the railing (theyd eat the peanut butter, leave the cracker--this amused me every. time.) i had many an awkward photo shoot under its endless branches rocking the limited too like me and my equally awkward middle school companion were The Hotness. i used to follow its roots through the front lawn and just be all, whoa, trees. i imagined climbing out and in and up in it, until i saw the sky and the neighborhood and all of it below me. i wanted to get to that part of the canopy that hung over our street and looked like a world unto itself, where i used to look up towards on sleepy summer late afternoons when things were draped in that light that makes everything just as youve wanted and expected, a kind of familiarity that only lasts an hour, and imagine my dad walking through there as he came home smelling like workclothes and july, instead of the sidewalk below. when i moved up to the attic it made my room a tree house. when i walked into my room the first thing my eyes always found was green, green, green. it shook in the wind and so it shook my windows and teamed up with the moon to throw wild shadows around my room on snowy nights and i felt more safe then than ever. we call it "The Maple" and it is ours.
anyway, the other day my dad sent this:
To both of our sweet ladies, the attached will seem as bitterwseet as it does to us. Sadly, our beloved Norway Maple from the front of our property came down March 11, 2009. She just couldn't come back from the insults of October 2006. Poor thing.
She was suffering, so this is probably for the best. We already miss her.
We wanted you to see this photo before the shock of seeing it in person. Sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings, girls.
and this:
oof.
shes seen it all, including the time they had to like, fucking airlift our new couch and bring it through the porch door because our downstairs one was too narrow. shes watched our old messy chaotic little house rattle with wind and shouts and hurt and slow to a kind of peace i cant find anywhere else. shes the Maple. shes home. she did good.
other non-tree things, mostly about wordz:
-i think jan and i may have talked through the block im having with this whole "loss" piece. the thing is, since zeroing in on the whole how loss has/does function for me thing, ive been obssessed with, but in a very pre-writing haphazard note taking kind of way, so that by the time i go to write, im overwhelmed already, and already need a break from it. it doesnt help that ive been submerging myself in didion, in her words and her rhythm and the intricacies of how she structures everything, and she makes me feel like yeah creative nonfiction! one second, and holyfuck shes so perfect, i cant write, omgshesoperfecticantwrite the next. (god that woman only gets better with time. the intro to the ginormous collection i bought that feels too pretty to even write in, and normally i like my books good and beat up, is baller, and says something about how the space around her words on the page is even more interesting than it should be. truth.)
-we also talked about how writing is extra tricky now because you know too much. nothing was evidence of that more than at work this morning, when annie tested out this thesis statement exercise shes doing at an ed conference soon and i got so over-involved i couldnt even really do what she asked. its like, for 8th graders.
-my peace corps essays will be the end of me, and i think the phrase "motivation statement" can now make me gag on cue.
-one track mind is still currently set to voracious blog-reading and The Future.
its time to go do a lot of things, and then go to panama. bye!