I’ve been thinking about the big Mother Tree in our backyard. She lost a few limbs the dry summer that Danny was born. They came down while we were away from home, visiting Grandma Claire for her birthday. They fell in a place that didn’t make sense…heavy limbs placed carefully in places that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Betsy came to help Micah move the pieces of limb after he got the chainsaw going. I held newborn Danny in my tired arms.

It’s no surprise that I have a soft spot for trees. Aside from my intense love of plants in general, I was, definitely and completely, indoctrinated in the love of trees by my tree-loving parents. We planted them, watered them when necessary, raked their leaves or smelled the sweet pine-y-ness of their needles. We stopped to admire them on long walks while camping underneath their canopies.

Dad planted a bunch of evergreens along the south side of their acreage the year I turned two. They were so small I could step over them. They tower over us now, strong breaks against the wintertime winds.

This year has been one of telescoping backwards and forwards. As the present rushes by in days that look pretty similar: three meals fed, books read, bedtime songs sung, etc., my spirit’s eye has wondered, what will it be like when he’s a teenager, a grown man, and maybe a dad someday? What things will he remember and hold dear from these early years? And in the same breath I reach back—-to my little days, but also to my imagination beyond what I know.

I remember the feeling in the room when, one afternoon, my sister and I stood by the window with our Great Grandmother watching the pine trees she’d planted with her husband fall in the straight-line winds that raged. A landmark she had nurtured fell in the saturated soil and the gusts. The tips of the tree-tops brushed the window panes as we stood silent.

I wonder: who planted the cedar trees that flank the driveway of the old place, the house down the road from my Mom and Dad’s farm, the place I’d like to move our little household into someday. There aren’t cedar trees anywhere nearby. They were someone’s idea, someone’s hope, and here they stand, gnarled barked and many-branched.

I suppose this year of moving my way slowly through grief has been one where I’ve seen myself in the middle: a ring of a Great Tree. My little slice is unique, marked by the conditions of my life, but one of the whole. And I wonder, when those who come after Danny look backward, what they will see and what will be remembered.

If I’m doing it right, I hope they’ll look back with gratitude and look forward with hope. That’s what I’ve been doing.

May we know our place in this long, circle of time. May grace smooth over the rough patches and tie up the ends we drop. May Jesus be near as we look forward with hope and backward with thanks. Amen.