Every day for a decade I passed this mighty oak tree. Although most beings are gender fluid to me, this one, most days, felt like a Grandmother to all of us. She was massive, her trunk was almost five feet in diameter. Her canopy was so large it covered the entire front yard near the home where she was planted, and created shade all the way from the corner of the block and across the street. Grandmother was so heavy that over the 150-200 years of life, her trunk had bent and dropped low to the ground vereing west. It got so that you had to duck under her if you wanted to stay on the sidewalk.
Every day, she was there for a conversation and a hug. I took tremendous comfort in times of trouble and made feeble efforts to give back even a modecom of the love she transmitted to everyone. Although she was low enough to climb in and take shelter (with a leg-up); I never took the opportunity. I just received the love that emanated from her enormous arms.
Trees communicate with one another through their root systems and canopies, and she was certainly the caretaker for the trees of the neighborhood; holding the wisdom of at least a century more than all the others—about fifteen of them on the block. As you may know, California has been in a drought for a decade and the lack of groundwater has left many tree root-systems to rise to the surface seeking their thirsts quenched with the little water they got from the rain or a neighbors weekly watering allotment.
The city of Pasadena protects her Oaks; the law prohibits cutting them down unless there is a health and safety reason. One day, as I took my morning stroll; I saw a sign posted on her bark. It was the mark of death. The city was letting the neighbors know she would not be long for the world. She was bent so low that not every citizen could navigate her limbs and remain safely on the concrete. I felt a deep pang of grief in my gut and then anger emerged. How could they consider to cut down a centuries-old healthy tree, rather than just move the sidewalk to accommodate her needs. She was there before the city!? In defiance, I took the sign off of her trunk and continued on my route. That day I began a phone-call, prayer campaign for her life. I couldn’t imagine a world without her.
Months went by, and there she stood, slumped over in all her glory. Until one afternoon, I clearly hadn’t been by for a week or so, and burst into tears as I walked up on her—rounding the newly laid concrete that circled around her trunk. The neighbor, whose front yard now harbored the sidewalk, saw my reaction and came outside. She told me, she too, had been deeply upset at the prospect of the loss of Grandmother. She too, had called the city, even offering to provide a new sidewalk—when a crew showed up to remove and replace the sidewalk with one that respected Grandmother’s presence. I wiped my tears of relief and joy, thanked the woman and continued on.
Finally, for the first season in a decade the plentiful rains we’ve received have taken us out of drought, but brought another peril. During the largest rainstorm we’d had in years, Grandmother succumbed to her retracted root system in the heavy rain, dropping almost two feet closer to the ground, now becoming a danger to everyone around her—within a few days she was gone. Grandmothers greatness, chopped and chipped; her love spread around parks everywhere in the city, along with two other magnificent oaks from the same block.
This time, I wasn’t sad, I knew that it was Grandmothers choice. She gave her life so that the others, some of them seedlings, could prosper and grow and be here one hundred years from now to comfort and love the neighbors and each other. Low and behold, on my walk today, over one year later; I saw Grandmother’s reincarnation popping up from the root system that was far down in the earth. It had taken her months to be nurtured by the earth and make her way back to us, the sun calling her everyday.
It was a profound reminder that what we seek, seeks us. Just because we can’t yet see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. And, greatness does not die, it only reinvents new ways of expressing itself. So, for today, I am grateful for those things that are emerging in my life; yet to be witnessed.
