Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 77

During an ice storm, I found myself observing trees; more precisely, three neighborhood trees. My next door neighbor has a row of twelve-year-old Bradford pear trees on our property line. He had seven until a storm took one out. An ice storm split scores of limbs off the surviving six. Bradford pears have beautiful white flowers for ten days in the spring, but their limbs grow fast and at a steep angle and they are, consequently, brittle trees. After Bradford pear trees reach the age of twelve or so, a stiff wind or ice storm can snap big branches off or smack down the whole tree.

Another neighbor has a magnificent willow tree. Every limb, covered with half an inch of ice, moved and swayed—danced with the winds—but lost not a limb.

In my yard are five Thuja green giant trees, evergreens between eight and twelve feet tall. Covered with ice, the tops of all five bent over and kissed the ground. They looked more like chuppahs than trees. Now a week later and the ice melted, three are perfectly straight, one is almost straight, and the fifth—the oldest and tallest—leans a lot, like a stooped old man bending forward at a forty-five-degree angle.

I can identify with the Bradford pear. Sometimes I am rigid. When I become aware of it, Theognis of Megara’s words may come to me: “Wisdom is supple, but folly keeps in a groove.” I can identify with the willow. I do not break easily. My life work has helped me put things in perspective and shrug off many things as “just” inconveniences that are incidental.

The older I get the more I identify with old Thuja. We get partly bowed by winter storms, but not broken. And it takes us longer to straighten up.