Thorns

The middle of March came up and caught me somewhere between the lion and the lamb. The ground, though newly defrosted, lacked the hint of green I longed to see. Though the air no longer held the chill of winter’s shadow it was not warm enough to be comfortable. I hoped for some sun but thick gray clouds kept the warming rays from my eyes. We had rain last night and there will probably be more tonight. I could feel the weight of the moisture in the air.

I went out into the yard that afternoon just as my Father used to. He always insisted on beginning the spring clean up of the yard early. “This was the time to do it.” He had often said. “Do it before the April rains come.”

Well, I did not plan to rake the yard today. Instead I hoped to rid a small lilac bush of the thorns that threatened to choke it. Now was the best time for this job. There were neither leaves nor bees to hinder my task. Also I needed to be outside. I needed to breathe the air and feel the freedom that winter took from me.

My Father hated being cooped up in the house. Maybe that’s where I get it from. However, he would have taken care of the thorns last spring instead of putting the job off for another day. We cannot all be like our fathers I guess.

Still, I felt like him as I walked out to the shed. I retrieved a metal rake and an old lopping shear. I also had with me the new pruning shears I bought last week, the ones with the yellow handles. My father had a knack for picking out the right tool for the job. I tried and often got close.

I looked at the helpless lilac tree. Although a shrub, lilac can grow to be twenty feet high. This one stood ten feet and would grow taller if it wasn’t for the thorns. It was not the largest one in the yard, nor the smallest either. The thorny vines worked their way up to the highest limbs and pulled down the branches. Thorny tendrils hung down eager to snatch any passerby and became quite the hazard in my yard. The tree hardly flowered last spring, and this year I feared there would be no flowers at all. My wife suggested cutting everything down, the thorns, the lilac, everything. I couldn’t do that. “There’s hope yet for that little tree,” I said to her.

Besides, Dad would not have given up so easily. He knew more about trees, shrubs and grass than he had time to teach me so unfortunately, I have to wing this one.

I recalled the time I ran over the small cherry blossom tree he had just planted for my mother. I had only received my driver’s license a week ago and this was the first time he let me take out the car. I had cut the wheel too much hoping to miss the lawn mower in the driveway and instead nailed the tree. I don’t know what magic he had used or what trick he had employed but that tree lived and still stands today.

As I looked on the mess of vine and branch that stood before me, I realized the little pruning shears were not going to do too much for me. I picked up the lopping shear. I snipped off a few thorny vines at the top and pulled them free from the lilac’s branches with the rake. The thorns protested only mildly. “See this isn’t so hopeless,” I said to myself.

I freed a few more limbs from the clutches of the creeping vines, but I had to be careful. My gloves were not as thick as this job required and the thorns were more than eager to snag my flesh. Little by little I trimmed away the vines. I grew bolder, searching out the thicker vines hoping to release more of the tree. Pulling on the vine with my rake, the tree bent over but the thorny vine did not come free. The limb I worked on snapped. My rake, now helplessly tangled in a mess of vine and branch, threatened to take down the whole tree. I stopped pulling. By twisting the rake and with only a little damage to the lilac, I freed it.

There must be another way, I thought. The branches came down low but did not touch the ground. If careful enough, I might be able to work my way up the lilac from the bottom. I squatted and crawled under the lower branches, taking care not to snag the collar of my flannel shirt on the thorns.

The vines ran down the thickest branches to the ground. Using the pruning shears as a spade, I cleared away the blanket of dead leaves until I could see where the thorns pushed up through the ground. They slithered up from their bed of earth and worms and continued up each branch. They twisted and wrapped around the lilac like a serpent.

“You have to watch out for the vines, they always find a way,” my dad used to say. “They can twist and turn and come up anywhere.”

Dad was certainly right on the mark with that. Many things in life find a way to creep up and get you. Dad taught me that too. I immediately thought of his sickness. There was a lot to say about what cancer can do to a body. Fortunately my Father did not have the time to make too big a list. None of us did. I snipped away the thorns right at the ground as I thought about the past year. We no sooner learned of his condition and it seemed as if we lost him. The cancer just came up and strangled the life out of him.

The irony is the very same man who told me to watch out for the vines could not. “Hopeless,” he had said to me in the hospital. “Hopeless,” my wife said this morning about the lilac. I’ll show them both hopeless. I began working on the thorns. Cutting every few inches, I twisted them off the branches.

I could not blame my Father for getting sick but I cannot forgive him for giving up so easily. “Lots of people beat this thing,” I remember saying to him. He was not listening. He let it creep up on him and strangle him. He hadn’t put up the least bit of a fight.

Maybe Dad knew what he was up against. “You have to choose your fights,” he once said. Maybe this was one fight he was not going to win and he knew it. This lilac tree can go on resisting the creeping thorns up until the very end, but its end will come. Despite all the resisting the thorns will kill it, that’s just the way nature works.

“Then again who says you can’t fight nature,” I said to myself. I removed the thorny vines from all the branches from the ground to above my head. Mind you I was only kneeling beneath the lilac. I looked up. A maze of thorns and branches spread out above me. It became harder and harder to tell one from the other. I wiggled my arms and torso up between the branches I cleared. I continued snipping along with my pruning shears with the yellow handle.

After a while I came to a point where I could stand. I had to slide my body up through the branches. It was tight and if I had not already cleared these branches I would be missing a few layers of skin. All the cut pieces of thorns lying around my feet made me feel a little proud. Slowly I made progress. Come supper time there will not be a single thorn left in this lilac. Then I noticed something beside my right shoulder.

I looked closer. I never noticed this from outside the lilac. A small nest sat tucked away in between the branches and where the thorns were the thickest. The nest consisted of pieces of twigs and straw tucked into a ball a little larger than a grapefruit. You would never notice it from the outside. The thorns enveloped the small nest. Using the tip of my pruning shear, I carefully pushed aside some of the straw. Inside I saw a small beak and feathered eyes closed tight with the remains of a new born slumber. There were even pieces of egg shell lying on the bottom of the nest. I pulled the shear away and dropped it to the ground.

Now, as I looked at the nest and at the thorns I knew I couldn’t go any further. The thorns, wrapped tightly around the nest, dared me to disturb them. In one push or pull they could destroy that small nest. I knew it and so did the thorns. The tiny birds inside probably did not. Hostages, tiny sleeping hostages, I thought.

I wiggled out from beneath the lilac and inspected the shrub. I hoped to find another way. I knew removing the thorns without hurting the tree was possible, though I doubted that I could do so without tearing the nest apart. “The thorns had won,” I said to myself. I raked out all that I had cleared away and hoped the remainder would wither and dry. Maybe I could try again in a month or so when the birds abandon their nest.

“You have to know what you’re fighting against, son.” I remembered my Father’s words as I put the tools away. I guess sometimes it takes as much courage to know when not to fight. As I walked into the house, I looked one more time at the lilac. The late afternoon sun tried to poke through and ended up painting the clouds a darker gray. The air was definitely a lot colder also. Maybe the lilac’s chances were slim but not as slim as the chances of those birds in that nest if I disturbed it. I had to leave those birds there sleeping and hidden in their thorny sarcophagus. As I went in the house that afternoon, though I had made some progress, I still could not help thinking that the thorns had won.