Home is where you can name the trees

• January 14, 2020
• Uncategorized

Most mornings I make a cup of tea and walk around the farm with the dogs. Often, I pause to sit on the gnarled branches of this ancient live oak tree. Our farm is dotted with wise old oaks, but this one is my forever favorite. It’s where I come to sit and pray. Tucked under its canopy I can listen well enough to hear what the next right thing is.

If we have ever gone on a hike together, you’re aware a walk in the Florida woods with me is an involuntary ecology lesson. I struggle not to point out the way live oaks keep their leaves in winter, explain that if you were to cut down a cabbage palm you would find a sweet nutty heart inside, or point down gopher tortoise holes whispering that maybe we will get lucky and see an eastern indigo curled up inside. My soul is deeply rooted to this spit of earth jutting out into the sea and I want everyone to know its magic.

If we have ever traveled together outside of Florida, you’re aware a walk in the woods is like hiking with a toddler asking continuously, “What kind of tree is that? What about that one?” Last summer while walking down a winding Pennsylvania back road with two dear friends patiently indulging my curiosity by telling me about the trees, we mused about why people are drawn to understand their natural environments. That evening I scribbled in my journal, “Maybe home is where you can name the trees. Maybe we are all looking for home.”

In the last year I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of home, particularly for the kids during our divorce. I feel good about the decision we have made, both of us opting to stay on the farm so they can hop back and forth between the house and fifth wheel. I’ve promised them this is home no matter what house they are in and that Daddy and I will both always be here and love them and our family very much. I hoped especially that Ellie Jo heard those promises but she’s so little I still wondered how much was sinking in.

Then, this weekend, on a walk around the property as we passed the oak tree I visit in the morning, Ellie Jo exclaimed, “Mama this is my favorite tree! Me and Weller climb this tree. And me and Dean did, remember? This tree is the fun-est!”

I told her it was my favorite too, but before I could ask if she knew what kind of tree it was, she continued, “It’s an oak tree. See the leaves, mama? They’re green. It’s cold so all the other tree leaves are dead but this one, oak trees, these leaves don’t get dead they stay alive because it’s a live oak tree.”

I let out an exhale a year in the making; relief that I never needed to worry if she felt like she still had a home.

She knew it was a live oak because she hears everything I say. Her roots are tracking mine down deep into this land already and she is listening as I talk on our walks through the woods. What I tell her is sinking in and she trusts what I say is true.

 She can name the trees. She is home.