Growing Under the Canopy

I came across this photo I hadn't seen before. My mother snapped it while I was picking apples from a tree in my backyard.

Recently my daughter recommended The Island of Missing Trees, a fictional tale by Elif Shafak about the role of a tree in the lives of a couple who met in Cyprus. I've only just begun reading it, so I can't say yea or nah whether I'll recommend it myself. So far, though, the author has drawn me in with her fig tree's narrative.

I'm fascinated by things that were here long before I existed and will continue on after me.

I often find myself wondering at the old trees around my property, imagining the things they've been witness to and reactive toward during their long lives.

Those trees grew as my family did, as well as the families before mine. We've had some cut down because they were diseased and dying. The ones that remain will carry on when a new generation moves in and more children grow under the canopy.

The past, the present, and the yet to come. The trees that today temporarily belong to me, yesterday were nurtured by someone else, and tomorrow will be nurtured by yet another. A continuum that evolves and sustains.

"Human-time is linear, a neat continuum. . . . Arboreal-time is cyclical, recurrent, perennial; the past and the future breathe within this moment, and the present does not necessarily flow in one direction; instead it draws circles within circles, like the rings you find when you cut us down. Arboreal-time is equivalent to story-time." —The Island of Missing Trees, page 47

We just turned the page to a new month. Recently began a new season. The trees are starting to bud.

I reflect on these things more frequently when the earth's seasons are changing.

I'm also thinking about changes to the season's of my life and contemplating how well I've contributed to the world up to this point. How I'll contribute in the future. Will I look back to see long-lasting, positive impacts?

My life isn't as large and unforgettable as I've sometimes convinced myself. The truth is, I believe most of us humans will be remembered by only one, maybe two, generations past our own.

But I think our choices and actions carry on through the people after us, both familial and unrelated. The same way we carry those forward from the lives before us. Through that lineage, we leave an imprint that will be remembered . . . perhaps no longer directly visible, but not completely forgotten.

"Where do you start someone's story when every life has more than one thread and what we call birth is not the only beginning, nor is death exactly an end?" —page 56