The Folded Clock: A Diary

Chapter 25: October 30

Today we are assessing the damage from the hurricane. We have brown water flowing from our faucets but we do have water. We have lights and heat and Internet. We no longer have half of what was once a whole tree outside our windows. To bemoan the partial loss of a tree when others have lost whole homes is ridiculous, but I am bemoaning its loss (I’ve told myself) as an object lesson to my children, who cannot understand loss on a grand scale and so must learn to comprehend it in smaller increments. They must learn about loss through a tree.

The tree is the reason we moved into this apartment; I have said many times, “Without this tree I do not want to live here.” I have spent nights worrying that something will happen to the tree; it will grow sick and die, a taxi will lose control and mortally wound it. The latter worry is not far-fetched. Our windows overlook a cursed T intersection. A girl was killed by a falling chunk of cornice at this intersection. A man in a helmet catapulted from his motorcycle and landed facedown in the intersection, many yards from the point of impact, and appeared to have dropped from the sky. A taxi lost control and rear-ended a FedEx truck and took out a pedestrian waiting to cross the intersection. The intersection is the site of many car accidents. While cleaning the kitchen or making the beds, I have often heard the sound of brakes and crunching metal. The tree protected our home from the chaos. It filled our windows with white, or green, or red, or a hatching of bare sticks like the fingers you put over your eyes during the scary parts of horror movies. We had to crane our necks to see the bodies.

But now half of the tree is gone. During the storm, a large part of it lay in the street like the man hurled from his motorcycle. I didn’t even realize it was our tree—I thought it was a weaker sapling, hauled wholesale from the roots. When I ascertained that it was ours, I wanted to go outside and investigate even though the hurricane was still raging. My husband observed, “If you die out there, your death will be so stupid.” I waited until the wind subsided a little. I ran out to see what remained of our tree. Not a lot.

This morning I prepared my daughter and son for the possible death of the tree. I tried to make them understand how long the tree had been there, and how old they would be before, if in fact we lost it, another tree could grow to be as large. How to make people who don’t understand time feel a loss that is best measured in time? It proved tricky. The only way to demonstrate the loss was to dramatize it. When the tree crew arrived to remove the half-tree from the street, I stood on the windowsill in my pajamas and watched. I acted sad because I was sad. Our tree would never be the same. It might even die. The damage wasn’t insignificant. I wanted to be the conduit of sadness — and of passing time and mortality — by interpreting the significance of the potential loss of the tree for my kids. I could tell this wasn’t happening. I could tell they were more interested in my reaction to the tree. I thought ahead to a point in time when this behavior might become symbolic of who I was or, depending on my life status, am. I do not think it unwise to view all children as future tattletales. Such a perspective forces you to better (and with greater care) behave, lest your conduct be chronicled later, and prove revealing in ways you did not intend. If and when my daughter told her own children about her memories of the big hurricane, maybe the only takeaway she’d recall would involve me. I was the object lesson. My mother was undone by the possible death of a tree.