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Today I’m a bit of an emotional wreck, I sit in my backyard, commiserating with my beautiful magnolia tree, deeply rooted in the western corner. This is the space I return to, time after time, to think, to lament, to listen. Today I seek the soothing presence of my beloved tree, who assures me, “all is well, all is well, all is well.”
When I consider the layers of stories this tree has witnessed, I dissolve into her past, viewing life from a loftier perspective. I believe she found fertile ground before the neighborhood was conceived. She started her life in the midst of a prune orchard, wide open, and free. When the contractors marched onto her land, the ground was subdivided, and foundations were laid. Families in search of shelter formed a simple but solid community. She knew who my good friends would be before I did, she enticed them into the neighborhood, so they could find me.
This tree watched over me in grade school, as I roamed the streets at midnight, accompanied by a gaggle of silly friends, armed with stolen toilet paper, and mischievous intentions. We would decorate the houses of the boys we liked with our long white streamers, then run squealing back to the safety of our family room, sleeping bags, and popcorn. We were spoiled, naive, and innocent but the tree knew better. She must have observed the young girl down the street, sneaking out after dark to rendezvous with a boy, because her parents did not approve. She married him years later, had two kids, and set up housekeeping not ten miles away. I used to be her best friend but now I realize the tree knew much more about this girl than me.
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This tree was part of my girlish dreams, my secrets still deeply rooted in her soil, permanently stored in her rings of knowledge. This tree lived a few blocks away from my childhood home but her tall branches kept me in view. She stood silent, resisting judgment, a sentinel in the night. Like the world, she too has experienced periods of creation, and destruction. A witness to generations of trick-or-treaters, neighborhood parades, and family celebrations, but also death, sickness, and the dismantling of families. As our lives branched out into the world so did our tree. I left the neighborhood for a while, ran off with the boy I loved, lived as far away as Kansas, but the tree never forgot me. When she called me home I came running. We bought the house with my beloved tree in 1990 and four weeks later we brought home our third child, a baby boy, named Anthony Joseph Oreglia.
She is not a neutral member of our family. She is a nobel witness, alive, and vital but rarely paid homage. This tree has hidden easter eggs, our safe base for freeze tag, shaded our playhouse, and became our centurion during backyard campouts. I have turned to her trusted presence for most of my life. We had to cut off one of her branches when we were expanding our nest. She didn’t make a sound but I know we wounded her. She was a christmas present one year, as we built a fort in her sturdy branches, and she became my children’s refuge for fifteen years. The names of their loved ones carved in her branches. She shaded tables at graduations, birthdays, and holidays. She held my children in her arms as they watched the neighbors dog kill a lost kitten that wandered into their yard. Both the tree and the children were traumatized. She has joined us for numerous dinner parties, as we sit beneath her majestic branches, our voices drifting into the wee hours of the night. She is as familiar as a wine glass in the hands of our friends, she is embedded in our memories, her presence invaluable.
I am a little nostalgic today, as my son Tony, prepares for an extended journey. He will be living in Australia for the next year and a half. I can not really think about his departure without tearing up and losing my composure, so I ignore the calendar, and the shrinking days to this arduous goodbye. He will grow as a man during this time. He will have many experiences that I will not witness and this causes an ache deep in my heart. I trust this young man to direct his own life, to seek out new challenges, and to follow his own destiny. He is ever so compassionate, capable, and strong. I will miss him more than he will ever know. I worry that our family cat will have passed before he returns. In two years he might have a new niece or nephew to love. I will miss his passion for life, his noble influence in our home, and our early morning chats over coffee. Tony has grown up in this house, there is not a place I can turn, where a memory of my son doesn’t come to mind.
It was our beloved tree who watched in horror as this young man mounted his bicycle in our driveway, rode through an occupy rally in Oakland, crossed the Carquinez Bridge, and climbed the Mayacamas Mountains by moonlight, ending up in Clearlake after a twenty-three hour solo ride. No one knew but the tree. He has an adventurous spirit that will not be tamed. I sit quietly beneath the family tree, silent, strong, and centered. I hear her whisper in the breeze, “all is well, all is well, all is well.”
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This post was previously published on www.cheryloreglia.blogspot.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Cheryl Oreglia
