The Tree, by Emilia Muller

I wrote the text below following a spur. It came just about right since I had noticed, yet again, that my nephew is growing up and I was lost among thoughts and memories. Any spur to write is a good one. If you were searching for one, you have found it.

The Tree

People say that experiences have no physical body. But maybe they have spirit.

I never knew melancholy until I became a father. In the first years of my boy growing up, I lived my life at the limits of fatigue and fear. When one is on their own, there aren’t many things to be needed, but when one becomes responsible for somebody else’s existence (especially when they can care for themselves), one’s body becomes a vessel for a strange type of tree that has its roots in your stomach, and the rest of the branches have spread all around one’s body, from toes to pate. And thus one learns that what one believed about fear was wrong and gets new perspectives on it. Moreover, all fears up until that moment seem to have gathered into only one – that of knowing your child is in danger. And so one starts to feel one with the fear because it is within yourself and circulates very fast from one side to another, in your body, through the branches that vibrate, and the roots (your stomach, that is) clench as if only by becoming smaller it can ensure its existence.

When my boy started going to school, I was so proud I could not fit my skin; literarily, I would feel the branches extending and the roots growing, like a dough. Time went by so quickly that, in retrospective, I realized I did not make the most of the moments when my boy was an infant or when I heard him speak for the first time. Or of the moment I heard him calling me dad for the first time. You know who you are and you also know that your child knows who you are, but when you hear it coming out of its mouth for the first time, it’s like up until then your ears have been clogged, and that voice not only unclogged them, but it also made you live a kind of music that speaking could not have generated. One is lost in helping with homework, or solving small dilemmas, taking or picking the child up, and one does not realize that all starts moving too fast, like a big stone tumbling down from a cliff. And one keeps moving, unaware, surprised by the things the child learns or does.

When he started going to high school, I already knew I was suffering from melancholy. I would watch him every day and every evening and I always found him different than how he was in the morning. Often, I tried not to look too close for fear of admitting that what I was doing was to search for traces of when he was a baby. Other times, I had the sensation that he was changing more than twice a day, and his voice suffering constant changes would support this. The tree inside of me was smaller now, not much, but enough to provide him with the space he needed in order for adolescence to carry on uninterrupted and so that I won’t suffocate him with reproaches or lessons for which his ears were not yet ready to receive.

I was so glad when my boy became a student. Life had put a great gown on for him, putting on display the wonders that one can reach once one becomes an adult. Anyone, at his age, would have been charmed, and life played a beautiful role in luring him, just like the Sirens used to do with their magic songs, luring sailors. Life had become this siren chanting an irresistible song. Even though this song is a different kind of song, with no melody or obscure purpose. This is just life; this inevitable movement going forward without ever getting the possibility to go back. Now, I saw my boy rarely than before, and every time he would come visit me, my branches would expand and, after his leaving, they would come back to their original size. I was marked by the aching absence of him and the passing of the cruel time. This is how it is supposed to be, my father once told me; the young are to grow and the old are to get older. Late in life does one discover that one has already made peace with it, that anyway one cannot withstand this and one cannot stop the passing of time. I would often spend time dreaming about the past. One learns this lesson very fast, especially when it hurts to see that what you once lived cannot happen again. And the smallest thing can throw you right in the middle of a sandstorm from which one learns to get out in one piece only after a couple of trials. A brand of sweets or clothing, a word you know your child used to mispronounce when they were small, a picture, a former teacher, friend, or colleague, almost anything can make you sick with melancholy. This melancholy that is sweet and addictive but is also dangerous because it gives one the feeling that one is entitled to trying to relive those moments, when in fact all one should do is to remain present, to create new beautiful moments that can turn into memories to relive when the longing gets tougher. And only this, to relive.

For parents, when their children move out of their house, life does not seem to wear such a beautiful gown, and it seems less enchanting than for those that have just started their journey. It’s like trying to recoil a ball of wool that is almost all loose. One tries one’s best to get it in the initial form, one pulls and pulls at the thread, but the ball never gets back to its initial form. Some are stubborn and try and remake it a couple of times, and with every try they pull at the thread harder and harder, believing that they will succeed; others stop after the first try or the first tries, bitterly feeling the injustice of this, but being aware that they cannot do more and finding comfort in the fact that at least they tried.

On the day of my son’s wedding, it was the first time I felt my face changing into a mask. I was happy, oh, I was indeed very happy, how can one not?! But the branches from the left part of my body were so cramped as if they were trying to protect my heart from some kind of danger. No one tells one that the most difficult part of being a parent is to find out that one is no longer useful or enough. My boy no longer needed me; well, he no longer needed me like he used to when he was a child. But I can't help but wonder, do children ever grow up in their parents’ eyes?! When one is a child, one wants, even needs that one’s parents see one as an adult. I know, for example, that I have always wanted my dad to see me as an adult, that I was capable of taking good care of myself and of others. Only now do I understand that this is a concept difficult to grasp. It had no relation to me whatsoever, but to him, my father. Watching my boy next to his lover, I was living a strange feeling, like he was two people at the same time. This tall man, with a very confident smile on his face was moved by what was happening, and was accompanied, on his left, by the young boy he used to be. My young boy! Oh, when we speak to other people about children, we talk about them as if we own them, which is actually the only thing that does not change throughout the years. Regardless of what happens with one, this is what soothes the longing and gives one powers to carry on. My little boy was still there, and in my father-like mind I was hearing the adult making the necessary presentations of the people present at the wedding, but I was hearing the little boy instead, asking me for painaches (that’s how he called pancakes when he was little).

I wondered if the parents of the girl felt the same, seeing in the lovely woman in front of them the little girl they once knew?! I didn’t find courage to ask. Some things are meant to remain a mystery. It is better to not know it all. Answers can hurt or disappoint. And there’s enough of disappointment in this world to create some more.

 

Today, I no longer have roots. Nor branches. I am one with nature and I believe I have become a spirit. But my boy... my boy has now roots, on his own, and those branches grow beautifully!