At this point my mom was still, incredibly, working a part time job from home, and one of the major obligations attached to this work was weekly or biweekly Skype calls on her computer. We tried to secure a babysitter to take care of Finnegan during the calls but given his special needs he was unused to and unable to be left with anyone but immediate family. Thus, my corresponding responsibility was to keep him for the duration of the call. These calls were nothing to sneeze at, sometimes lasting up to two hours.

Most of the time, when the six month old was passed off to me, I would perch him on my hip, grab a blanket covered in pastel hearts, a small bucket of toys for him, and head out to the double pine trees in our front yard.

Our lovely Virginia small brick house was surrounded by a cow field and a large garden patch, and in the front yard were two towering white pines. They were about twelve feet from each other, and in between them was a carpet of shaded sunset-colored fallen pine needles, with large sturdy roots protruding throughout and shreds of green grass climbing out of the needles.

Our house was just a narrow gravel road away from the entrance to a lumber mill. This meant that at least fifteen times a day, huge semi-trucks and small mulch trucks would drag their load into the mill. For Finnegan and me this provided ample entertainment, as I would stand with him sitting on my hip and any time I saw a semi lumbering down the small road I would tell him to “Wave hi!” He had mastered the art of waving and, as he waved, I would make the horn honking motion; more often than not, we would be greeted by an earsplitting bellow from an obliging trucker.

When the call went especially long, baby would start to get sleepy, as we were still in the blessed days of two naps daily. When he inevitably tired, I would sling him halfway over my shoulder and walk figure eights looping around the pine trees. I knew the second I stopped moving the adorable tyrant would wake up and demand Mommy with shrieks to wake the dead. So I walked loops until my back ached and my arms feel asleep and boredom set in with a vengeance with semi-trucks and my beloved pine trees for company.

To fight the boredom of walking in circles for hours, I would sing every song I knew, a clashing mix of British folk and mainstream pop with a little Russian indie and U2 thrown in. I was practicing to fulfill my most cherished dream, appearing on America’s Got Talent as a groundbreaking singer. I was not aware at the time that I could not carry a tune.

I would also let myself daydream about my crush. We were desperately in love with each other, but given a cross-country move and his family’s culture and rules, we were destined to tuck away our feelings until we drifted apart.

My last boredom-fighting device was planning my future businesses, my favorites being a conjoined coffee and bookshop venture, a shop that sold nothing but miniature clay cactuses, and a toy store whose main offerings were oversized and miniature games, things like chess sets with pieces the size of chairs and pocket sized checkers sets.

To this day I can’t see white pines without remembering my eleven-year-old hopes and dreams, and a frustrating duty turning into a haven of nature, peace, and hope.

A year later I was adjusting to my new home in Colorado and rebelling against the crippling lack of green growing things, the vacancy of natural streams and lakes, and far more car-damaging hail than cozy rainy days.

On sunny weekends my family piled into the car and drove to one of the many “open spaces” in our area. I soon learned that an open space meant either an oddly misshapen flat-topped hill-mountain or an expansive nondescript field that was more fire-hazard than view. Occasionally we would climb one of the slightly less formidable mountains a few hours from our house. I soon learned that no matter where we went in Colorado, there was crackling dry grass, short stubby cactuses, the occasional aspen, and, always, ponderosa pines.

Ponderosas, especially at high altitudes, can only be described as short, stubby, and sickly. At any place or altitude, the ponderosa’s pinecones are tiny, their bark is orangish and crumbling into tiny slats, their branches are irregular and fragile, and they are constantly oozing sap. I, missing Virginia and my tall, strong, symmetrical, sweet-smelling, steady white pines, considered the ponderosa a disgrace to the name of pine tree, and a sick mirage of home.

I hated ponderosas with a passion akin to my hatred of the New England Patriots, the highest and most deadly form of hatred. When I climbed them, I got sap in my hair and splinters in my eye from the perpetually crumbling bark.

In our new townhouse—chosen not for its charm but because it was the only house available exactly when and where we needed it—slammed between identical buildings with a fifteen by fifteen gravel filled pit for a yard, I yearned for my lumber mill, shady pine tree blanket, symmetrical spiraling branches, and pinecone dotted yard.

My hatred for ponderosas has abated somewhat, but my love for white pines never will.

To me, ponderosas will always be a foreshadowing, a promise of the real thing. But white pines will always mean peace, rest, and space to dream. They will always mean home.