The tree outside his window is a dead. It most likely died from too much exposure to detergent that seeped from a damaged drain pipe snaking from the kitchen’s wash basin. This damage was not discovered until the tree lost its leaves. The leaves have not grown back even now. The Maker assumes an untimely death far too quick even as trees go. And it is a painful lesson of life for him.
In its heyday the tree carried nests which the neighborhood cats ostensibly tried to invade with little success. The birds were always smart enough to put their nests in the tiniest out-of-reach branches. The tree offered to anyone who cared to look as much wildlife drama as could be seen in National Geographic. And all these, live, real time and with the convenience of a scene happening, well, just outside one’s window. It was the major part of the environment inside which the Maker wrote these stories. And so it is his intention that this piece be read as a marker for this event, a stone “stele” figuratively similar to what the ancient Mesopotamians used to mark the great battles of their history.
The tree outside his window is dead. Its leaves withered and fallen away months ago leaving now just bare saplings and branches. There had been a discussion of whether or not it might as well be cut away, its trunk and branches turned perhaps to firewood or lumber. After all, it is the assumption that dead things serve no purpose. The dead are buried and in some cultures burned. But these are only metaphor to filing the dead away oftentimes from instead of into memory. “Consigned” is the word most often used. Indeed, the Maker was debating the issue in his head even as he began thinking out this story, which initially should have been about woodcarving. He contemplated the sadness of a dead tree, a perfect shade lost, his world changed irrevocably, the inevitability of death and all that. Should he now cause it to be cut down?
It seemed to him a no-brainer until quite out of the blue he saw a green lizard gracefully pushing up the dead trunk stopping only from time to time to look about it searching possibly for threats. Or it might have been searching for insects to feed on for that is often the case with life. One’s predator is another one’s prey. The cycles of life and so on. These cycles threatened to become endless circles in the Maker’s mind when there came a slight sound almost on the edge of hearing. A tiny bird with a long beak, much like his imagination of a humming bird, began to hover a bit away from the lizard. It was only then that the Maker realized other birds still perched on and off its branches. The tree still teemed with life. He began to wonder if it was actually dead. Had it died at all? After all, how would one actually place the moment of a tree’s death?
Were there lessons to be learned here? The environmentalists will of course say, the first lesson is that detergents are deadly for trees. One does well to design how they are to be disposed of from one’s home. Another person might say something else. But it is Saturday as the Maker writes this. You will be reading this on a Sunday and so it is likely you will give this some sort of Christian reading.
The Maker imagines himself in church contemplating a cross and wondering what tree originally held the Savior’s dead body marking the event of human salvation. What type of tree was it? What species? How old? What did it look like?
The Maker’s tree is just old and big enough to make a cross of modest size. But it is well past the time when crucifixions were the standard method of terminal punishment. We do not hang people this way anymore. It is just as well. For by now, the Maker realizes his tree would be left where it is. For even its leaves will not grow back it continues doing what it always did, which is to contain life, not just its own but a host of other lives. It might have been technically dead but not functionally so. And that fact reminded the Maker of how the symbol of the tree contains the whole idea system of Christianity. The fruit of a living tree caused us to be expelled from Paradise. But it was a dead tree which brought us back to God’s good grace. What trees were they? What nested under their leaves, lived and breathed among its branches? What crawled inside its cracks searching or offering itself as food? What other fruits were hung from their branches?
The Maker plans to plant a crawling vine near the base of his tree. He imagines it enveloping its branches sprouting flowers and bearing fruit. Perhaps the birds will nest on it once again. They will still be out of reach of cats. Dead or alive, his tree never once lost its beauty. He wonders if it ever will.