Four September 1996 #4
I’m not sure what time I actually got to sleep, but it felt like only minutes before the morning sun was shining through the curtainless window.
I made myself a coffee, wrapped a thin blanket around my shoulders and went to sit on the stoop to drink it, to take in the rural sounds of early morning.
Beyond the side lawn, over a small hill, I could just make out the top of the birthing tree and I knew she was calling me to her.
The trail to the birthing tree isn’t hard to find when it’s burned into your memory.
It stood proudly just at the edge of Kiju’s, now my, property, a few of its longer roots pushed into the county, but she was firmly on our land.
I was upset when I reached the start of the path to see that it had almost entirely grown over.
Bushes spread their thin branches onto the trail, grass had grown down the middle where feet used to tread.
Thorns snagged the loose ends of my pants.
The trip was still short, but where once it had been filled with joy and anticipation, now it made me sad.
The tree looked lonely, an elder long forgotten by those she had nurtured and loved.
The well-worn dirt at the base where she used to welcome new souls was covered in grass and nature’s debris, old leaves, pine needles carried on the wind.
My heart dropped when I saw beer cans and cigarette butts scattered around the base.
This tree, this sacred place, where my mother once lay, once breathed, and where she died, was now used for parties.
It was sacrilege, I thought, truly understanding for the first time in my life what the term meant.
I slipped the blanket off my shoulders and shivered in the cool of early morning.
I placed it on the ground and began to collect the trash.
Sticky pop dripped out of old cans and insects inhabited chip bags.
I took a fallen branch and swept at the dirt.
I stood back, admiring the work, and just before the sun crept behind some gathering clouds, it shone on the base of the tree.
The gold that only the sun can produce seemed to enliven the tree, and if I am honest, I thought I heard the tree sigh.
She seemed to be herself once more. She just needed someone to care, someone to understand and acknowledge that she was still important, that the world still needed her, that I still needed her.
I gathered the corners of the blanket and tied them in the centre, and I carried that garbage away, promising to come back.
When I returned to the house, I boiled water and washed my blanket, then all the blankets, taking care to be gentle.
They were old and hand-sewn, fragile. The clothesline had fallen, but the clothespins still sat on a shelf in the back of the house.
With a chair from the kitchen table, I was able to reach the tree where the line had once been attached and reattach it.
I flung the two quilts over the line to let them dry in the autumn sun.
The mattresses stunk of neglect, so I pulled them out and leaned them against the house, allowing the air and sun to rid them of their scent.
That morning, I made two trips into town: one to the power company to get power restored and the other for more supplies, mattress covers and sheets, dish soap and a cooler to put real food into, food that I could cook over the wood stove until the power could be restored, which they told me would not happen until next week.
I was beating the mattresses with a large stick I’d cut down from one of the trees in the back of the yard when Susan’s minivan pulled into the driveway. It was close to dinner and she carried a grocery bag toward me.
“Thought you might need some supplies.”
I followed her inside the house, where the stove had been going all day.
“Jesus Christ almighty. Got it hot enough in here?” She laughed as she set the bag on the counter. She pulled out a bag of baby spinach and some veggies, salad dressing, bread, a rotisserie chicken and lastly a bottle of red wine.
“You go continue your violence against those mattresses and I’ll get some dinner ready.”
After dinner, Susan helped me to put the mattresses back on the beds and make them up clean. I would sleep in my own bed again. We took our glasses and headed outside.
“I want to show you something.”
We walked to the tree.
“This the tree from when you guys used to have babies, right?”
“Yup. And now look at it. Kiju would be so sad to see this.”
“I know there weren’t any more births here, but people often said they saw her up here cleaning away the garbage left by people partying. She kept it tidy.”
It broke my heart to hear this, that my grandmother had taken care of the tree even when it no longer served the purpose she held so dear.
But then again, we all eventually stop serving our purpose, but we are not left out to die, we are not abandoned.
And Kiju knew this. If I wasn’t convinced to care for this tree before, Susan had lit a fire in me.
I would make sure this tree and everything it represented to generations of people was taken care of.
Maybe I wouldn’t be welcoming newer generations, but I would protect the history of those who had been born here.