Before I stepped foot on what would become our land, I fell in love with pictures of it. Hours away with small children to mind, I poured over real estate ads, circling ever farther from the epicenter of Blacksburg until I came across a listing in Dublin, Virginia.
Features that probably discouraged other potential buyers were selling points to me. Built in 1923—I wondered what history still lived and breathed in the walls, bricks, and wood slat floors. Non-insulated windows—I marveled over the original glass, beautiful in its imperfections and uneven clarity. Over half an acre of land—I envisioned room for my children to stretch their growing legs. Each picture tugged at me and whispered, This is the one.
Then I clicked across pictures of the landscape. Those .625 acres boasted a sprawling weeping cherry tree right in the heart of the property. Its twisting branches reached toward the sky like fingers spread wide, and tendrils of delicate pink blossoms hung like a gossamer curtain around the trunk. It was the sort of tree Ann-with-an-E Shirley would have named instantly, prompting L. M. Montgomery to wax descriptive over pages and pages to do it justice.
The tree mingled together all those hopeful whispers
and presented them to me as a gift.
The tree mingled together all those hopeful whispers and presented them to me as a gift. Though the house would be the home that held my family, that tree would be a monument, an anchor, to the heritage we were establishing there.
As years passed and children grew, the tree provided shade and shelter for picnics, boundaries for wild gardens and games, and a legacy of beauty. Simple, comforting beauty. I could see it from the window over my kitchen sink, and I watched carefully for the one day in spring when it would finally bloom, knowing that its enchanting veil would last mere hours before the gentle winds rolling off the Blue Ridge mountains would begin to carry its adornments away.
Some years I missed the blooming. In the busyness of those dirty dishes and hands and laundry, I sometimes failed to lift my eyes long enough to catch the hints of its imminent array. Oh, how I mourned those days and longed hopefully for the grace of the year to come.
And then, one day, not too long ago, winds pitched and rains battered and a once-strong branch of my weeping cherry splintered and tore itself from the trunk, revealing the invisible now visible, a deep hollow through its core. Then I mourned for a horizon that had been and would never again be. For the memories that would not be made and those that were now bittersweet in the remembering.
It fell away quickly after that. Bit by bit. Branch by branch. Now my weeping cherry is a skeletal shadow of what it once was, unrecognizable to me and to passersby. It is only a matter of time before all that remains is a stump in the center of the yard, a hole that is not a hole.
The more I think about the decline of that stately tree, so elegant and grand, so alluring in pictures and so radiant in person, the more it seems to parallel my life in startling ways. This business of mothering and working and all that comes naturally in my season of life also makes me increasingly weary and anxious in ways that threaten to hollow me out. Sometimes they do.
I wonder if I am recognizable. I find myself asking if the strength and the beauty that once, I think, characterized me are still present. And not just present, but palpable.
It would be a sad thing to contemplate were I not able to look past the misshapen former glory of my tree to the roots which still anchor and hold it in place. Roots that will remain entrenched and grounded long after the last vestiges of branches and trunk have been carted away. Am I, too, not still rooted? And isn’t there beauty and strength in that? Beauty and strength worth clinging to and finding peace in?
I am glad I stepped foot on this land, sight unseen, wooed only by pictures. I am glad to find myself aging here. More than that, I am glad to have roots here. And though Anne Shirley would take the dramatic route and hold a funeral service for my fallen weeping cherry, I will not weep as it bends its boughs.
I will smile wistfully and whisper back to the wind blowing through its spindly embrace, This is the one.
Dawn Johnson
Dawn is a mother of six residing in Dublin, Virginia with her husband of 18 years and two small dogs. She teaches art, yearbook, journalism, and American History classes at a nearby Christian school. Though she is relentlessly busy, reading and writing remain a closely-guarded passion.
One Response
One of my favorite trees! Thank you for the story!