1.

There is a place at the edge of the pavement where the lawn meets soil and weeds and roots. Where the undergrowth is allowed to grow freely within the confines of a row of natural forest. Back in the growth where the garter snakes and leaves rustle are the twigs and branches and bark and phloem of the history of our Christmases in this house. Each year we add a new dried tree and each year the tree below is closer to returning to soil. It’s the soil that really marks how many Christmases and seasons have passed and seasons before we were here. Before us there were only grasses and animals in this place. Before us there were ticks and mud and wilderness. In some ways we have become a part of the soil in this place. Soil that has been here recording the history of this place long before we were here and will be here long after we are gone. The native people who once inhabited this land and lived on the soil that is now made up of Christmas trees were driven from this place so the land could be sold and farms farmed and houses built. I wonder if they ever considered what this soil would bear witness to in the years to come.

 

 

2.

I’ve recently returned to the house I was raised for the first time in more than a few years and I feel like I’m a square peg trying to fit into a triangular hole; some of the shape that used to fit is there but there’s just one extra corner that wasn’t there before. It’s a strange feeling to try to fall into habits that you knew once existed but somehow no longer can. In some ways nothing here has changed and in some ways everything has changed.

Stars have been a guiding force for humanity for thousands of years playing a part in religious ceremonies, measuring time and steering those in need of guidance. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way alone and hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe with just as many stars as our own. Even though the tools we humans use to navigate and measure time have changed, the stars are still present in our culture. In many places now it isn’t possible to see the stars at night because of light pollution from the countless bulbs used in streetlights, buildings and homes. Many times now I can’t see them but when I’m here at home on clear nights they’re always there.

Five years ago the night before I left for college I waited until dark, wrapped a quilt around my shoulders and walked barefoot across the quarter mile of golf course greens and roughs until I reached the hill I rode sleds down every snow day of my childhood. The Perseid meteor shower had begun earlier that night and I watched as each light traveled across the sky passing across the big dipper. Whenever I look at the night sky I center myself around the big dipper. It’s comforting to know it’s always there. the ancient Greeks the Big Dipper was the body of the Great Bear, Ursa Major. Zeus fell in love with a woman Callisto and after she bore their child, Zeus’ wife Hera turned Callisto into a bear. Callisto roamed the earth until many years later she came upon her son Arcas who rose a spear against her. Zeus intervened and sent both into the sky where Callisto became Ursa Major and Arcas became Ursa Minor. It was strange, that night, to see lights drifting across a sky that usually so still. For something so beautiful the vastness of it scared me; to think that by the time we see the light of the stars they are already dead.

Now, five years later I make the same trek across the landscape with the same quilt wrapped around me and the same sensation of wet grass between my toes. The path to the hill is still the same. The Big Dipper is still there. It seems only I’ve changed.

 

3.

The image I just can’t seem to get out of my head is the old oak that sheds layer after layer as the saw cuts through to spew chips of wood that have witnessed the dust bowl, the establishment if a national forest and the decimation of the prairie chicken. In the past few weeks I’ve been considering the old oak trees in my life. Over the years my grandparents have played a central role in my life, they are the pillars on which me and my family stand. I have a stereotypical big Jewish family with dozens of second-cousins, aunts and uncles. My grandfather was the youngest of four brothers who each had wives and children and now grandchildren and great grandchildren. I used to mind how big our family’s Seder was each spring, the one meal the entire year where dozens of relatives I hardly knew were brought together to catch up on a years-worth of family news and gossip. As I’ve grown older the Seder has grown as more grandchildren and great-grandchildren are born but as the number of babies and toddlers has grown the number of grandparents and great-grandparents has shrunk. When I was among the youngest family members the four brothers, my grandfather and his three older brothers, sat at the head of the table with their wives. This year only two brothers and one wife would have sat in their places at the head of the table.

The onset of this pandemic has changed the way people think, act and walk through the world. I walk down the streets of my neighborhood and see one neighbor has started chopping wood and has piles of split trunks in their front yard. The grasses in the yards are growing taller and uneven in places and broadleaf plantains are sitting squat and comfortable. I wonder if we kept living like this whether the native plants would return; whether they would overgrow the pavement and come up from between the patio stones. I wonder if the green would grow and grow until the neighborhood was covered like an ancient ruin. I talk to my grandparents on the phone every day now, something that is new to my routine. It eases us all in some ways but makes me want to hold them now more than ever. My grandmother who has slowly been disappearing into a fog the last few years has emerged with more alertness and memory than I’ve seen in years. A woman who grew up in the aftermath of the great depression in a poor family this crisis has flipped the on switch in her. At this chance I see the saw chips away at the years and I feel like I’m reaching my hands out to catch the splinters before they can slip away. Her memories of raising a family, of raising me when both my parents worked full time demanding jobs, her openness when her family grew in untraditional ways at a time when society demanded otherwise. When I consider my actions now I think about those too young to have memories yet of their grandparents and I make a choice so that they can have their own oak trees and the opportunity to hear stories from each ring and splinter firsthand.