Blue Spruce

There’s something poetic in this, but I’m not quite sure what.  Nevertheless, it’s a little bit interesting.

Many (too many) years ago, when I was about 10 or younger, my father brought home a beautiful young blue spruce tree.  He had just gotten it from the nursery and set out to plant it one afternoon.  I really admired that tree, it’s color was so deep and lovely.

Dad carefully dug a hole for the tree as I watched from a distance in the front yard.  My fathe,r being an easily irritated sort of man, intimidated me.  He tended to snap at me when I asked too many questions in the garden.  I had learned to keep quiet and to keep my distance.

Before too long a couple of little girls whom I didn’t know came walking by.  They walked up the little hill to where my father was toiling and asked him what he was doing.  I remember thinking, “Uh oh… they’d better watch out.  Dad’s going to snap at them.”  But, instead of snapping, my father kindly and thoroughly explained how he was planting the tree and why he was digging the hole in that particular manner to nurture the tree.  Seeing this, I thought to myself, “I must be a horrible little girl to have my father react to me the way he does yet be so kind and nice to those little girls.”  Thus my life progressed with that “truth” constantly ringing in my heart.  After many years with a wonderful husband and family, along with a wonderful therapist, the truth was altered to understand what a poor father he actually was.

Last week I had to go retrieve his ashes from New York (where I grew up).  He died 25 years ago but my Mom is still alive and I could not stand the thought of her being interred in New York, so far away from me.  We had a scare with her health and I thought it was the end.  I had promised her I would get Dad’s ashes and bring them to Chicago so that they could be here, with much of the family, and be together.  My daughter and I went on this little journey.

When I was on Long Island to get the ashes, my daughter and I went to see my old house.  The wonderful owner invited us in and took us from room to room, letting us view the changes and the many things that were exactly the same.  So many memories… 

Anyway, once we got outside in the front yard he said, “There was a big old blue spruce here,” he pointed to a dried up broken stump, “ but Hurricane Sandy knocked it down and uprooted it so badly it had to go.”  I remembered the day it was planted and how small, exciting and new it was.  (I have always loved blue spruce trees.)  Somehow it had grown big and robust and somehow it had been broken and dead.  My father worked hard on his garden, but none of it really remains.

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