My childhood home is a classic 1950s ranch. A single-story of yellow brick anchored by an attached two-car garage. Two graceful Chinese elms elegantly arch over the generous front yard.
The elms. Oh the elms. Soon to be elm, singular. “I don’t like that tree. It’s a nuisance. It has to go.” This, from my mom - nature lover, green-thumbed gardener, and…tree executioner?
There are a surfeit of scenarios that could ignite my Irish mother’s firey spirit: Water leaking into the basement. Polarization in politics. Her kettle suddenly refusing to hot up her morning cuppa tea. But such passion about a tree?
“That tree created problems for me. It’s betrayed me,” she explains with gusto and a tinge of sadness. We’re 120 miles apart, tethered by my iPhone and her cordless landline. Even though I can’t see her, I sense she’s looking out the window above the kitchen sink, eye-to-bark with the traitor tree.
I grew up looking up at and being shaded by the two big, burly elms. They’re part of the landscape of my life. Of my entire family’s existence. The elms were planted in 1953, a year before my grandma bought the house. In 1962, mom and dad bought the house, trees and all, from grandma. The elms’ brawny branches have loomed large in our family ever since.
“I try to be nice. Take a limb off here, a limb off there. I am sentimental about it,” mom reassures me - and herself. I’ve seen that sentimentality in action. She and my dad spent thousands of dollars lovingly keeping the tree alive over the past six decades.
And what did it offer in return? “You know that tree almost killed your bother,” mom recalls; further establishing her case for the elm’s imminent demise.
In the 70s, my brother proudly clambered up the tree’s sky-high boughs. I like to imagine he did a little cheer at the summit. Perhaps pumped his fist into the air and exclaimed “Huzzah!”
He then promptly tumbled down. To the ground.
Our sister watched her big brother’s antics from beginning to bitter end. Observing his limp, unmoving body lying akimbo atop the tree’s bulging roots, she ran into the house screaming: “MOM! Mike’s dead! Mike’s dead!”
Attempted murder. May the record reflect the traitor tree tried to kill her son, your honor.
“I’ve known it’s been going for a while,” she reports during minute 45 of our phone conversation. Last spring, the traitorous elm came out of dormancy with a sigh and a whimper. Mom side-eyed the tree’s lackluster leaf growth and called in arborist. Who, in the magic of small town America, is a member of our own family tree.
He swiftly confirmed mom’s suspicions: the tree was, indeed, half dead. It might be revived with injections - no guarantee, naturally. The other option? Cut her losses and cut it down.
When our relative/arborist advised mom of her options, she was shocked. Then resolved to be the tree’s hero. “The mighty tree. So sturdy. I thought: I’ll do everything I can to save it!”
Upon further reflection, however, her heroic sentimentality swiftly soured. “I just thought: go away, tree! You keep trying to be smiley and put out a few more leaves. It doesn’t matter! I have other things to do than worrying about this silly thing.”
She does, indeed. Like what to do with the sizable stump after the tree is cut down. My brother - not the one who tumbled from the terrible traitorous tree - informed mom that arborists handle trees and stumps as separate billable entities.
She was flabbergasted. “Don't give me a half of a sandwich; give me the whole sandwich!” That delightful metaphor had me laughing for a full minute.
“Remove the stump. I don’t want to look at it!
“And, what if I want to plant another tree there?”
Somehow, I don’t think a new sapling is in the cards. When I inquired if she’ll miss the doomed tree, she sounded a little dreamy, “When the tree is down, I’ll be able to look across the yard and see the squirrels hopping around in the woods and the deer running through the gully.”
Then, with a giggle, “Wait. Let me look at it one more time to see if I’ve changed my mind again.”
A second later her Irish brogue is back in my ear, full of spit and vigor. “I’m done with this tree! It’s toying with me now. It’s thinking ‘how much more pain can I give this lady’?”
Case closed, your honor.
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The flora of Cypress St mark many milestones: the bushes paralleling the front sidewalk, the tree by the clothesline, ...
Also, in a similar story of youth… Greg used a pulley type system and hoisted himself to the top of the tall tree in front of his house. At the moment his mother opened the front door to call him in for dinner, she witnessed him fall to the ground. He got away with only a broken clavicle. I wonder what she thinks about every time she pulls in the driveway or glances out the front? Murderous traitor or foolish son?!