Two oak trees stood in front of the farmhouse where my memories begin, two massive old guards whose branches shaded our front porch, who looked out over the yard and the road and the church beyond. I couldn’t reach my arms around their trunks, and their lower branches were far too high for them to be climbing trees. I loved them anyway.
I remember raking their leaves with my dad every fall, making trails through the gold, piling them up in the autumn-dead garden and lighting them on fire. The flames hid among the leaves, rarely visible, curling the edges and sending up smoke. It was very much like the beginning of The Brothers K, where the child narrator is watching a neighbor rake the leaves back on top of themselves, the flames gathering.
The neighbor man throws an enormous forkful of leaves onto the burn pile, smothering the flames . . . A dense cloud of white billows up through the smoldering leaves . . . the leaves ignite. Even through the window I hear them bursting into flame.
I remember one year playing too close to the flames, stomping my way through the smoking leaves, pleased to be helping my father with something so important, and then going inside the house only to realize the embers had bitten small holes in my bright green sweat pants. I was sad to have ruined my clothes and secretly amazed that I could have been so close to the fire without realizing it.
I learned to ride bike beside those trees, shakily racing down the bank, shouting all the way. Many years later these trees would find their way into my first novel.
One spring, one of the oak trees was struck by lightning—I saw the flash of yellow through my sister’s bedroom window, then the explosion of limbs and branches, then, after it all, the incredible sound, like the world splitting in two.
* * * * *
The house my parents built, the one we lived in after that farmhouse, when we moved away from the oak trees, is for sale. We left that second place 25 years ago, and who knows how many people have lived there since. I looked at the photos on the real estate website: the pictures of the rooms, the stairs, the kitchen, the deck, the yard. Each one brought a flood of memories rushing back.
There, where we played football inside and we nearly broke my cousin’s nose.
There, where I ate the same breakfast of a bagel and hot chocolate nearly every morning of high school.
There, where my youngest sister was born when I was 16 and I walked to high school later that day, feeling like the world was fresh and new and everything was starting again.
There, where I walked out the door on my 21st birthday and my dad said, “Be careful.”
There, where I came home from college and discovered the pleasing ache of writing it down.
There, where I first brought Maile up the stairs to meet my family.
Looking at the photos, I could almost hear the sounds of our family moving around, of my dad coming home from work, of my mom calling that dinner was ready. And now someone else will move inside those walls, gather a pile of intimate memories, and take them out into the world.
* * * * *
I’m not completely sure why, but as I write these things down I’m reminded of my foray two weeks ago into that underground world, 3,000 feet down. Into the mine. I’m reminded of the darkness and the smell of pulverized rock and the taste of dust. The empty sound of water trickling into holding pools. The distant, rumbling approach of massive trucks carrying nickel and copper ore to the surface.
At one point I asked one of the miners if he minded spending so much of his life underground, away from the sun. He thought for a moment, said that sure, when the days are short, and he entered the mine when it was dark and left in the evening when it was dark, he missed the daylight.
He stopped again, and I thought he was finished, but then he said, sometimes, for just a moment, when no one else is around and he’s working alone, he’ll switch off his headlamp and stand there in the darkness. And when he does, in that complete and utter lack of light, in that place that feels lonelier than deep space, he can hear the millions of tons of rock all around him moaning and shifting. He can hear the movement of the earth, a sound like nothing else, a sound from the very earliest days of creation.
Then he shrugged, and our conversation ended. What he didn’t say, but what I sensed, was that these moments of communion with the darkness and the rock made up for the lack of light. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t trade them for a normal job, one under the sun.
* * * * *
Things change, don’t they? The earth is always shifting. We’re normally too busy to hear it.
When I last drove by that old farmhouse, years ago, there was something strange about the place, something empty, something fundamentally different. That’s when I realized: only one of the oak trees remained. The sky was bigger, there, over the house, like a new canvas, and the farmhouse itself looked naked. I could see parts of it I could never see before, when the old oak was standing there with its incredible branches and heavy leaves and massive shadow.
That was years ago, when I saw the first tree was missing, and I haven’t been back since. I wonder, with some hesitation, if I go by again, will the other oak tree be gone as well? It makes me not want to drive that road, that twisting winding road into the countryside—I can’t even imagine the emptiness in the sky, if both of the old oak trees are gone.
I’d rather remember it as it was.
Beautiful writing, Shawn. I can relate to so much of this. My husband and I are in the midst of letting go of a property that has been in the family for 50 years. We have lived here for 19. Before that, it belonged to my grandparents, who built the little house and barn in a former potato field with an incredible view of the mountains. Everywhere I look, I see a memory--from my earliest childhood, to raising my own children. Every corner of the six acres. Every scar on a tree or ding in a wall. I remember. But our kids don't want it, and we want to travel as nomads, so we sold it. We are happy to start this next chapter of our lives, but it is bittersweet. Indeed, parting with something/someone so dear is a uniquely sweet sorrow. Thanks for writing.
This beautiful writing really hit home with me. We recently cut down the large tree in the front of our over 100 year old farmhouse. The electric company had trimmed the top of it so that is was very misshapen and it prevented sunlight from reaching the front of the house at all. I’m enjoying the clear view of our pasture and it will provide some firewood to heat our home for a few weeks. I didn’t think any of our grown children would care, but the youngest asked to save a slab to make a small table out of it to “remember” the tree. All four of them climbed that tree and used the various swings that have been tied to it. Thank you for putting my thoughts into beautiful words!!