The Yellow Tree

I always forget the name of the tree in my front yard. It goes through a number of iterations every year, remaining a traditional green for about six months during which it also sprouts lush yellow blossoms then these orangey/red dry petal-like pods, then the yellow leaves that you see here, that gradually drop off and litter our front yard and then, finally, stands bare-limbed for a few months until late April or so when it all starts again.

I don't know what I want to say here, other than the tree marks time in an odd way. Everything changes, and everything changes dramatically, but nothing changes, really. I always think of Sophie when I see this tree during its yellow time. I think of how everything is always changing for her and sometimes even dramatically but how everything, too, is always the same. This is not a qualified statement, something that I believe is good or bad or sad or happy. The older I get, the more I let the qualifier things go. This, too, has nothing to do with good or bad, being faithful or lacking faith, wisdom or stupidity. This is a tree.

This morning, Sophie had another seizure that she recovered from quite quickly, except for her foot. Then she recovered from that, again.  She went to school, and I sat on her bed and sat with myself, really. If you can feel a myriad of feelings and think a million thoughts -- leaf green, flowery yellow, pod-like pink, green-veined yellow, brown-bare and dead on the ground -- then you know what I mean. I felt despair, to tell you the truth, or what feels like despair in the guise of dissociation or supreme weariness. I realized, this morning, and a bit the other day when I wrote the 22 maybes post, that I am less traumatized by the actual thing (the seizure, the paralysis, the constipation, the impacted bowel, the poopy diaper) than I am by the tail, made up of those things, that I've dragged for twenty years, that I'll probably keep dragging with me for as long as Sophie and I are alive.

Yes, traumatized and sometimes overcome. So, I sat there for a while, and then I called my father for a pep talk. I got off the phone laughing.

I'm not too good at extending a metaphor, but think tree -- green, yellow, orangey-red, yellow, brown and back to green. Think of a tail, perhaps a dragon's, its scales green, yellow, orangey-red, yellow, brown and back to green. Another day, another year, behind, today, tomorrow.

I go among trees and sit still

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
Around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
Where I left them, asleep like cattle…

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
And the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Wendell Berry