Things That Go Bump in the Night

 

I knew I would love my house when I met the grandfather tree, a 250-year-old oak in the back yard.  “I have seen things!” he introduced himself.

I am privy to a few of the things he saw, some through art, most via hearsay.  He whispers gossip when I do yoga on his crispy fall leaves or meditate with the crows in the snow.  The neighborhood is alive on many levels and his height and depth assures he misses nothing.  Bugs, birds, worms, marauding coyotes and humans. I can’t tell you everything, because you have to speak tree to understand, and if you speak tree you already know.

He tells the neighbors about me too.  It’s part of the deal. No secrets in the garden.

A maple tree brushed my window when I was a little girl. She too whispered information to me, what happened before me, what was happening at that very moment that my feeble human senses couldn’t detect.

I spoke tree better then than I do now. 

It was, in fact, my first language. I didn’t speak English until I was four and everyone thought I was going to be a big problem. “Jingeleish” I called it. But here’s the secret: I learned more from maple tree than I did from the nuns.  Sometimes I feel that words get in the way of understanding. And I’m a writer. I’d probably make a better tree.

I went back to that house as an adult.  It looked like a crack house. Boarded up. A shadow came out, wrapping itself around me, taking my measure, before going up in smoke.  A branch from  the maple tree was growing through the bedroom where I slept as a girl. Punched right through. I laughed and  called to it, sure she was looking for me—I had so much to say!—and she was, and she filled me in on what had happened since, her orange leaves rustling in tree song, her old branches creaking from the weight of stories which we scared each other with.  Happy Halloween.