Willow Trees

Roger took a flying leap at the budding willow tree branch. Watching him swing so freely, giggling and yelping like Tarzan, I was filled with glee. “Watch out! My turn!”

I ran and I leapt and I grabbed two fistfuls of branches and kicked my feet up from the ground. It was the closest I’d get to flying without the terrifying feeling of a free fall. Roger circled back to the top of the hill and came barreling down toward the tree again. We ran circles like that, one after another.

But then, on my fourth turn: tragedy.

I ran, I leapt, I grabbed, I swung, and I fell. I fell! How did I fall? I was still holding onto the branch. I looked down at the branch in my hand - the thin, flimsy willow branch - frayed and broken from its source. It lay there lame and limp in my hand.

“Oooooo!” Roger jeered, “You’re gonna be in TROUB-LEEEEE!!!”

Tears came brimming up to the bottom of my eyes.

“No! I didn’t mean to!”

I was sorry as soon as it happened. The tears were because I was going to be in trouble. But they were also because I broke something special. Even at seven I couldn’t miss the majesty and almost sacred stories this magnificent tree must hold. And here it was - a frayed and broken piece in my hand.

“Are you crying? You’re such a girl.” Roger accused, rolling his eyes.

It was true enough. I was a girl. What did he expect?

I looked up the hill just in time to see Gran coming out the back sliding door and walking briskly down toward us. Relief washed over me. It wasn’t her I was afraid of. It was Mom who would be devastated and Dad who would be angry. Mom loved the tree. Dad hated disorder. But Gran loved us.

“Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”

I couldn’t stop the tears from spilling over.

“It was an accident!” I wailed, helplessly holding up the branch. “I’m gonna get in trouble, and the tree is broken, and now it might die, and I didn’t mean to, and...”

“Shhh.....” Gran said, picking me up and rocking me gently back and forth.

“Shhh..... Quiet now, my sweet.”

Her rocking and soothing hand gently rubbing my back calmed my tears and slowed my breathing. But I still clung to the sad, broken branch.

“What am I going to do? Mom and Dad are gonna be so mad.”

“Now, now. You just let me deal with them.”

“But, it’s broken.”

“I don’t know about that,” Gran said thoughtfully, with a knowing smile.

“Are we gonna tape it back on?”

She laughed out loud, a full belly laugh. It wasn’t a mean laugh like Roger’s.

“No. No, I have a different idea. Come on! And you hold on to that branch.” She sat me down and took my free hand and started walking across the back yard to her greenhouse.

Roger followed behind. “What are you going to do? You can't plant it. It won’t grow! It ain’t got no roots!” I knew he was right. But I also knew Gran. If Gran said something would be okay, I knew it would be.

“Now, just you wait and see,” she said, turning to both of us with the familiar and reassuring twinkle in her eye. “Just you wait and see.”

When we got to the greenhouse she pulled out a big bucket and got some gardening wire from the small chest of tools. She marched us around to the faucet and filled the bucket with water. Then she had me hold the branch with the broken end down in the water and rigged it up with the wire so it was standing up in the middle of the water. She brushed her hands together three times and stood up straight with her hands on her hips and a satisfied smile on her face - her universal way of telling us she was all done fixing whatever she was fixing, be it a scraped knee, or a spat about whose turn it was on the swing, or a broken toy. Normally the result of her fixing was obvious - whatever it was she was fixing was, well.... Fixed.

“It’s still broken.” Roger said. He truly did have quite an affinity for pointing out the obvious.

“Just you wait,” Gran said, with a wink. She turned and grabbed each of us by the hand and led us back home.

Three weeks later she took us back over to the greenhouse.

“Look!” she said, excitedly. At moments like this it was hard to think of her as a grandmother. There wasn’t a single thing outside of the salt-and-pepper hair that would indicate she was anything but youthful.

Roger and I bent over the bucket and looked in astonishment as she reached in and gently pulled up the broken part of the branch.

It had sprouted tiny roots!

“It has roots!” Roger exclaimed.

We watched it carefully for a few more weeks and eventually Gran determined that its roots had grown large enough for us to move it to a small pot in her greenhouse. We filled in the dirt carefully, and every day I went to water it and look at it and make sure it was getting just enough sunlight.

By the end of the spring Gran said it was time to find a place to plant it.

“Let’s put it with the other one! It needs to be next to its mommy tree,” I said.

“Well, now, that’s a nice idea, but that might not be the best place for it. You see, this little tree isn’t always going to be so little. And if it’s too close to the mommy tree it might not get enough sunlight.”

So we walked around the whole yard and found the perfect place - it was all the way down in the far corner, away from all the other trees. It had lots of sunlight and there would be nothing in the way of its growing roots. So that's where we planted it.

That night after bath time, Gran came to read us a special bedtime story she’d pulled out from the basement. She held a dusty old book and told us that she’d read it to my mom and aunts when they were little. She held it up and had me sound out the title: The Wind in the Willows.

That summer was filled with adventures of my own as I doted over what I’d come to think of as "my tree" every day, and adventures of Mole and Rat and Frog and Toad and Badger in the evenings.

---

A decade later I stood in the driveway, tears once again filling my eyes as I hugged Gran tightly, her salt-and-pepper hair more salt than pepper now. The car was packed and my new chapter awaited me in a dorm room hundreds of miles away. Mom and Dad weren’t terribly thrilled with my choice, but they didn’t openly object. Gran handed me a small package wrapped in the Sunday Funnies section of our local newspaper - our favorite section to read together. “You can open it when you get settled in,” she said, giving my shoulders a squeeze. And then she leaned in and hugged me tight and whispered so only I could hear. “You take as much sunlight and room to grow as you need.” She let go and glanced down toward the corner of the yard to my willow tree. It was a nice sized little tree and still going strong.

That night after all the excitement of moving in, and after my roommate had gone out to a party, I was alone - so very alone - in the quiet of a strange room in a strange city feeling like a stranger to myself. I remembered the package. I picked it up off the dresser and carefully opened the newspaper. A note fell out onto the bed as I flipped the book over in my hand. As I held the worn copy of The Wind In The Willows in my hands my eyes brimmed with tears. They spilled over as I picked up the note and saw Gran’s handwritten reminder: “Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!”