I will admit, I am glad to have you back. I’ve been lonely without you, though I should have been used to your absence, to the absence of everything, I suppose. I have been here forever, long before the tree before me released the winged seed which bought me to this spot; long before you arrived.
The building that houses you was built around me. I heard them talking of destroying me, my knotted roots posing a threat to the foundations that it sits on. I was protected. My antiquity saved me. But a tree holds in it every scar and trauma, and that threat is remembered in my growth rings, a bruise that never materializes can still hold pain.
For a long time, I hated the building; it obscured my light and cut me off from the other trees. During construction, everything was so loud that nothing visited me. The swallows that had been passing down the nesting spot in the crook of my elbow for generations did not return in May, and by the end of June, there was no flurried bustle of chirps and no flutter of previously egg-confined wings. I missed the company. The grey squirrels were deemed pests and were evicted from my trunk, and the spraying of pesticides was damnation for the woodlouse and bagworm that had welcomed visitors only months before.
Everything got better when she arrived. The woman who looked more like you than any other person in the house. She, with her tender hands and gentle disposition. Her pastel voice and delicate, unconditional love. Suddenly, half of the garden was dedicated to her, and from those tender hands grew a controlled and timid wilderness of lavender and primrose and delphinium and hydrangea. She encouraged all the most enticing wildflowers into her space. They were orchestrated and confined, but their presence was allowed so long as they were pretty. She was a sunflower; she was tall and wonderful and bright and fleeting. Suddenly, he wasn’t so concerned about threats to the building, and ivy and honeysuckles were allowed to hug and cling to the side of the house, and, without warning, the ugly exterior of the building was made beautiful.
Over the next few years, life flourished in the garden. She had gifted me with bumbling balls of yellow and black; and delicate flutters of orange-red, brown, and white. In return, life was brought into the building, and her stomach swelled with the announcement of you. She had spent most of the summer nestled in my shade, keeping the sun’s harshness at bay. However, as she introduced me to the screaming bundle of blankets that was you, our peaceful summer together was cut short.
She loved you, and so, for everything that she had done for me, I chose to love you too. That did not make liking you any easier. From the moment you were strong enough to pull yourself up from your feet, your mission was to conquer my height. At 5, you could scramble up to my lowest branches, your pestering feet using every dent or ridge on my body as a tool to propel yourself upwards. At 10, you begged and begged the man in the house to build you a tree house for me to support. Images of hammered nails and toothed saws appeared in my mind; body weighed down by a miniature house hosting hordes of small children and then drunken youths, before being neglected until the wood becomes waterlogged and rotten, allowing disease and decay to enter my trunk. But she, as always, was on my side. She fought against them and defended me with her kind words, and you were forced to settle with a tire swing around my thickest arm.
All was well for some time. You grew, and the others began to grey and wither. The swallows returned after a few years, and my elbow was a haven for a family once again. The rope for the tire swing was secured, and I held it proudly, like a rubber pendant. As expected, you were obsessed for a week before the novelty wore off, and it hung as decoration. She would come out and sit on it occasionally. A break from tending to her garden, a chance to get away from you and the man. She would tell me about you, or at least her sighs would. At first, she weighed down my arm, the rope would creak and go taut under the pressure. The rubber seat was sturdy and supportive. Over time, her visits were less frequent, and her mass lighter. She began to wilt. Her soft hands became weak. Her pastel voice became translucent. Her orchestra of wildflowers had become an overpowering crescendo, and she was too delicate to hear it.
Slowly, at first, her petals fell off like some lovesick teen desperate to discover whether their love was requited, until they were all gone, with a simple ‘he loves me not.’
Unattended, our garden had become wild and unruly. It was late July, the swallow chicks had left my haven and were off finding safe places of their own. One afternoon, you and the man came down to see me. You were carrying a black box. You removed the lid. She fertilized my roots one last time. You were so strong and grown at this point, but you were both filled with so much pain. And anger. It was this anger at the unjust loss of her that caused him to destroy all that she had worked for. He looked around at the untamed labyrinth that surrounded his building, his life, and blamed himself for its abandonment. The plant beds were upturned. The bird boxes were removed. The wildflower meadow cleared away. The bees and the butterflies disappeared; the squirrels and the birds were evicted. He threatened me once again, but I was now protected by both my antiquity and her love. I wanted to hate him. To be filled with rage and fury and animosity. But he loved her, she loved him, and we were grieving.
As the cycle of the seasons continued in the perpetual way that it does, things began to change. He moved on, strange women would admire me from the upstairs window that she used to. He began to leave you alone for weeks at a time. You hadn’t been able to move on with the same swiftness. You were either locked inside, in the pit of your isolation, or roaming dark places and doing darker things. You looked like death and smelt like something had died within you. You would visit me and your mother at your worse, and we always tried to be there for you.
The swallows had not returned. The cycle of seasons continued.
A year later. He had introduced a new woman to the house. Her stomach started to swell. You were not home much anymore, and when you did come home, it was often in the back of a car with lights flashing blue. One day, you visited me and sat in the tire swing. It was nice to see you again. You took out a knife and began cutting through the rope that I had been so proud to wear. The tire was now on the floor; you used it as a stool. You re-tied the rope and took a few deep breaths. I was pleading silently and hopelessly. You stuck your head through the makeshift noose and prepared to kick the tire out from under you. More deep breaths, more silent pleading. Then, an answer to my calls, the chirping began. The swallows had returned. They were calling their song to you. That was enough to spur a loud cry from your withered body as you kicked away the tire. A head appeared at the window. Your body dangled and spasmed. He ran down. Flurry of tears. Blue lights.
It took you years to return to me. You bought with you your own version of her. She had tender hands and a gentle disposition. You loved her, and so, in turn, I loved her. Between the two of you, you rebuilt your mother’s garden, and you rebuilt your own kind of happiness. The swallows always return.