The Tree and the Hourglass

The Tree and the Hourglass

It’s amazing what one notices, when one finds out their time for noticing is coming to an end. Like you have spent your entire life walking around with your eyes shaded by a translucent curtain, and then one day they are reopened like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. I wonder if we ever truly see things, even as a child. Like a new born seeing its mother’s breast for the first time. No, I don’t think we ever really care to see anything for what it truly is until our eyes are awakened by the foresight of never seeing anything again. I think a man born without sight sees more with one simple touch of the hand then we do our entire lives. Sure we see things every day, some beautiful some horrible. Yes, I suppose we see a lot, but do we ever stop to realize what we’re seeing? To let it sink in to our over developed alien brains? I think not. We are too busy rushing to our early graves to stop and listen to what we are actually seeing.

Oh, you might think ol’ gramps is off his rocker, or I’m hitting the glaucoma medicine to hard. But it’s none of that. Words are just hard to choreograph together when you get to be my age. By the time the words in my mind reach their destination at the end of this pen, it’s too late to realize that half of them got on the wrong train; probably half way to Denver by now. Hell, when you get to be my age most words can’t even find the train station.

I guess I’m one of the lucky ones though, still got my wits about me and most of my hair. Although, lately I’ve noticed it’s retreating faster than the Yankees in 1812. Yet, my looks and eye sight are still fair. Ah yes, my eye sight. That’s what this old fool was trying to pen across before thoughts got in the way. I’m lucky because unlike most I’ve been given the gift of true sight again. Sure it comes with a cost, a cost we all must pay in the end. But knowing my time is near my payment comes with a gift.

Like I have said my time here is short and I’ve got all my affairs in order. Having no children of my own and my wife long dead from the same disease that is taking me I have sold this old Victorian gabbled house that I’ve called home my entire life to a young couple from Calgary. All my finances have been signed over to a charity that funds the reforestation of the British Columbia rain forest. I hope to redeem myself for my actions, one last penny thrown into the wishing well. Maybe old St. Peter will save me a seat at the bar.

I suppose I should get to my story before all my sand finally drops. The story of the old Maple Tree in the back yard. That stubborn tree my father planted some hundred odd years ago when he first came to this land. Some twenty years before I came screaming in to this world. The Maple is long past its prime, (just as I am) and the young couple would like it cut down before they move. For they fear it will come crashing down on this house from a big northern wind that comes tearing through here often. And I presume they're right.

So a few days ago, after all the papers were signed and the lawyers paid. I came home to rest on my old wooden rocking chair out back. To enjoy one of the last beautiful days in late September before that north wind picks up and freezes the earth for its long winter’s slumber. This is when I noticed this tree for the first time. Well sure, I must have known of this tree before, living here my entire life. Yes it’s true, obviously I knew of this tree but I always took that old symbol of my country for granted. Yet, on this beautiful September afternoon I truly saw it for the first time…

That day I melted into my rocking chair, overwhelmingly mesmerized by its true beauty and magnificence. The hours past as I listened with my eyes to its ancient tales. The tree engulfed my every thought and filled my mind with endless questions and endless words with ever ending answers. I wondered why these things had never occurred to me before. Sitting here in the back of my house like I’ve done thousands of times before, often with a cold beer in my hand after a long day’s work. I realized that my eyes were truly open. It was like everything had its own special glow, its own beautiful life force. I swear like an innocent man swears on the bible that for a split second all the mysteries of the Universe were split wide open just for me. Then I blinked… and they were gone faster than they came.

I sat in my familiar rocker, (as I sit now) staring up at this depressing deformed demon trying to free itself from Hades, reaching up to grasp the heavens with its gnarled knuckles attached to countless deformed fingers. Forever grasping for the unattainable yet never giving up its inner fortitude. I pondered if this monstrous gift to creativity felt pain, like when it lost a limb in a wind storm. Or the time a few years back when it got struck by an oblique bolt of electricity from the very same heavens that it tumultuously grasps for. I wondered if this tree had a memory of its own. If it remembered me and my tire that hung from its grasp, those countless hours I spent simply swinging as a child. Did it remember the birds that returned every spring from their winter migration to nest in its friendly arms? Was it lonely in the autumn when they left? Standing alone like a naked soldier at attention. Did it dream to follow them? To see oceans and plains? Was it uncomfortably comfortable to be planted here, or did it dream of wings? Did it try to fly with the wind, to free itself from its permanent torture of the elements?

I felt sad for such a thing to have to die every fall only to erupt back to life each spring. Every new blossom like a million middle fingers saying up yours to old man winter. I remember reading once that trees are the souls of the damned destined to live their afterlife trapped in the burden of the earth. But maybe I never read that, maybe that came from my own mind. Life’s funny that way, the things that you thought have long been forgotten, are just waiting for their proper time to be remembered. And once they are remembered, it’s long too late to act upon them.

I wept the day the Marx’s Brothers Tree Service came to my door, soaking my hands like I now douse these pages. I remember seeing the maple in all its ancient glory for the last time. Who was I to judge such a stubborn beast? I was reminded of the way a father looks on his daughter’s wedding day. You know the way he tries to hide the look of contempt in his eyes. Those few short moments after he gives his little girl away, but before he takes his seat. Those lonely and sad moments often missed by the unintuitive. It seemed to me drastically arbitrary for such an ancient stubborn creature to come crashing down to the very same earth it had been demanding to free itself from for more than ten decades. Who was I do judge such a stubborn creature? Over a hundred years to climb, and less than an hour to fall.

So now that’s what I leave, these damped pages and words that got on the right train. I couldn’t have finished at a better time. The last few grains of sand are falling in my hour glass. Making me too weak to write and barely finish a thought. So now I ask you, the one with that sand still left in the top half of your hourglass…

Have you ever listened to a tree?