Trees

I love my house. I love where I live. I told someone the other day that my house is my favorite thing about life right now. I was immediately embarrassed at how materialistic that sounded. I hate when I make bold statements that aren’t true. It makes me feel like one of those people that you know you can never trust what they say. My house wouldn’t mean much to me without my roommates or the dinner parties or the movie nights or the rich conversations we have there.
But I do love my house. I never tire of running down the same streets and looking at the old houses with the giant old trees towering over them. I have secretly named some of the trees marking the path that I regularly run. Each tree has its own personality, jutting out here, winding there, knobs, dangling limbs, firm and strong at places, appearing to defy gravity in others. Leaves are falling now, marking the stage of life this year is in. The trees have seen so many more years than I have. All from the same spot, the same perspective. Like one of those videos where the camera is set in place for hours and hours. Played in super-fast forward you can see the gradual change of things as they happen. The things we are too limited in our humanity or impatient to watch. And the things that go by quickly are a blur. I think this is how trees see things. They could care less about the cars driving by, or the runners…they care about the things that are going to stick around. The flowers that bloom, the grass that fades and turns green again, the children who grow up and move on. I think trees love children, even when their rope swings dig into their branches. Maybe especially when they are injured by rope swings. They forever carry these injuries with them, proudly displaying them like a battle scar, holding memories that only they and the grown children know.
My house has been there for almost seventy years. When they built this neighborhood they really knew how to make houses. They are all small because people knew back then that we all need to be close and more space only makes us more lonely. They made each house different and unique because they know how bored we get with what we see. Some are made of stone and look like little cottages and some have siding with shutters on the windows and some are made of brick with roofs that peak like a gingerbread house. They have great yards, though few of them have swimming pools. Just lots of birds, beautiful gardens, hanging plants and squirrels. They are starting to tear down some of the homes in my neighborhood to build new houses. I don’t have a problem with the houses they are building, but nothing in me wants them in my neighborhood. These houses look like something you would find in any other neighborhood in the suburbs. They are monstrosities taking up what was a large backyard with lots of trees to add a few extra bedrooms and a kitchen with a wraparound counter. Like the rest of the city, uniqueness and quality are being swallowed up by big, pretentious and generic.
Another thing that makes me sad is a phenomenon that is so common where I live. People are re-doing their houses. That’s not what makes me sad. My house was redone beautifully. And with all the home makeover TV shows these days, who doesn’t want to make their life more full by refurbishing old furniture or changing the color of the dining room walls? What makes me sad is that almost every time I see a house improve drastically, a For Sale sign inevitably follows. They don’t fix it up to live in it, they fix it up to sell it. There are so many parallels to life that I could draw from this, but I will spare you. But it does make me think about the areas of my life that I do this. What mediocre and dilapidated things am I living with every day? What am I putting off for some future day that I could be doing now…living now to the full?
I want to be like those trees, taking in life, letting it become a part of me, showing the scars and loving the memories. Not big, pretentious and generic, but solid, knobby and unique. I want the passing things to be fleeting thoughts and to really care about the things that are going to be around for a while.