A Family's Tree

I remember now the silent influence of trees all through my life. A popcorn tree that stood beside the one-car, wooden garage of my childhood home. I would climb it, hop over to the roof of the garage, and sit looking out on the neighborhood. A huge old oak tree that stood in the next neighboring yard of a rental house that was often unoccupied, so we kids had the run of the yard and played around the roots of the tree..

I remember peach trees that bloomed pink in an orchard that my father grew. My grandmother simmered a big pot of peeled peaches on her stove and we helped transfer the hot peaches to Mason jars. All the time we could see the orchard from her kitchen window.

There were rows of pecan trees that he planted around my grandmother's garden. I rememer the three types of pine trees on my father's tree farm: short-leaf, long-leaf and loblolly. I remember how miserable and cold we three children were when we helped him plant the pines. It was in cold November. He punctured a hole in the cold ground and we shoved the seedling into the hole and quickly covered it with dirt, returning our cold hands to our pockets as fast as possible. Long after he was gone I came to the realization that my father loved trees. The trees that he planted were a financial resource for my mother as his widow when the trees matured in stages over the next twenty years and were cut and sold to paper companies.

There were three pine trees that grew in our back yard in the city that was a part of our daily childhood life. We wove thin fragile ropes from the brown and green needles that fell to the ground. We had neighborhood pine cone wars in the narrow back street.

I can see other trees in my mind. A Japanese tulip grew in the front yard. A gift to my mother. I loved its pastel pink and purple blooms without any adorning leaves. A huge sycamore tree grew at our friend's house across the street. We would stand under the branches and sing "Zachius was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.He climbed up in a Sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see." Because of this children's song I could pick out Sycamores in my surrounding easily and frequently throughout my lifetime.

My grandmother had a huge fig tree in her yard and she made fig perserves which she stored in a closet beneath the stairs. She gave us a jar of preserves to take to our home in the city each time we visted her.