A Different Kind of Breakup
You lived at 357 Woodruff Avenue for over fifty years, growing up in your tree-like way, as I did in my human one. I had turned eight when I first saw you, gracing the northeast corner of our backyard, standing tall in front of the wall which divided our large backyard in two. Behind this wall there were fruit trees that gifted us with apricots, oranges, and plums in the summer. You were a maple, so we didn’t get to eat the fruit or seeds you produced, but your many gifts to our family were just as welcomed.
I could see you from our kitchen window as I washed the breakfast dishes on a Saturday. I would have rather been on my bicycle, pedaling to the library or maybe to my friend Gail’s house to swim in her pool, but I had chores to do and was expected to finish them before I went anywhere. You kept me company.
I watched house sparrows and finches perch on your branches that stretched to the cloudless sky. Sometimes a squirrel would scamper up a branch, leap to the wall and over into the neighbor’s yard. You stood sentinel.
In spring and summer, the green of your leaves stood against the backdrop of purple-hued Mt. Wilson in the distance. You were a steadfast and comforting part of my childhood and though I didn’t know it at the time, you would continue to be in the future.
When I practiced ballet twirls in front of the living room picture window; swaying to the music of “Swan Lake”, you were my audience and watched as I circled around the room, my long, chiffon thrift-store skirt swirling back and forth across my legs. With gentle breezes, your leaves waved to me, like a conductor in front of an orchestra or an audience showing their appreciation.
You graced our family with shade when we ate Sunday brunch and read the L.A. Times; Dad perusing the latest Dodger scores, mom doing the crossword, and my sister Beth and I fighting for the comics. We sat beneath you at the wooden picnic table my dad stained so that it looked like redwood. I looked up sometimes to find a nest in the crook of a branch, hidden by your broad leaves from predatory neighborhood cats. I heard mockingbird’s loud repertoire of calls, sometimes imitating the sharp “cawk, cawk” of ravens.
In the fall, your leaves turned red and yellow and dropped from your branches. First, there would only be a few, but with each good windstorm, they would accumulate covering the lawn my dad so faithfully mowed every weekend. By the end of October, the yard was ankle deep in leaves, curled, brown and dead. He spent many a November Saturday raking them into piles. I can see still him leaning on the rake, his faded jeans torn at the knee, his blue tee stained with sweat. Despite the leaves he chose to rake, he loved you too. Over dinner, he sometimes talked about the birds and squirrels, that depended on you for their homes and food.
“Get out of those leaves!” he shouted as Beth and I jumped through his neat piles, kicking at them, and scooping up handfuls. He tried to appear angry and bothered by our mischief, but secretly I think he would have liked to join us. When the piles grew large, we helped him put leaves in a large basket to be burned in our outdoor fire pit.
On weekends we burned your shed leaves, along with some fallen branches from the apricot and plum trees. I loved watching the flame catch quickly and burst into a ball of smoke and then ignite, crackling furiously. Bits of lit leaves broke away with the wind and swirled upwards, reminding me of the camping trips we took every year to Yosemite and the desert. If we were lucky, dad got out wire hangers he twisted into marshmallow roasters.
The thing that led me to feel even closer to you was when dad suggested building a tree house. We went to a lumber yard for planks of wood to build one. We both climbed the wall and onto your lower branches, shouldering the planks.
At one spot, Dad tested the strength of your radiating limbs to make sure they were strong enough to support a platform. The finished “treehouse” wasn’t really a house, as it didn’t have a roof, but it was wide enough for me to sit and stretch out my tan, scab-covered legs, lean back against one of your wider branches and gaze up through your leafy crown. High up and comfortably cradled, I spent many hours reading a good book, like Little Women, from the library.
I loved climbing high into your branches, now more than ever because I had a place within you. You grew outward and upward over the years and became my favorite way of getting close to the sky. When I reached the highest point in your limbs, I dreamed I was a bird and imagined soaring with outspread wings towards the mountains. From my treehouse, I watched the clouds as they formed and reformed into animals. Some days, I was an explorer on a galleon, perched high on a mast with my telescope searching for land.
What you gave to me wasn’t just lending your branches so I could peer into our neighbors’ yards, no, you gave me comfort as well. My parents had loud arguments, fights that often sent me out the backdoor, up the wall and into your arms. Once, my mom emerged from their bathroom in tears. One side of her face was scarlet, and she said dad had hit her. I ran out the back door, climbed up to the treehouse and stayed safe within your branches until mom called for dinner.
You were a haven from our family problems, which increased during my teen-aged years, and you stabilized me when I met Corby, my junior year of high school and embarked on the emotional roller coaster ride of first love.
I was an avid journal keeper and often recorded my shifting, intense emotions high among your branches. I found myself talking to you and knew you listened. You responded sometimes by sending a mockingbird to a nearby branch to keep me company,
Meanwhile, you kept growing, your trunk widening and your bark turning a dark grey brown. There were woodpecker holes up and down your trunk. I’m sorry now that I added to your scarring by carving a small heart in one of your branches, with the letters C and A intertwined.
Years after I left my childhood home, I often returned. Sometimes in summer, after college ended for the semester, or on vacation from my job in Portland, Oregon. Each time I pulled into our driveway I would pause to look at you before entering through the back door. You my friend were maturing, just like me. Sometimes, one of your arms lay on the ground, a result of a storm. The bark on your trunk was peeled in places.
When I got married, we had the ceremony below your lovely canopy, the perfect setting. Then when I had children of my own, a rope swing hung over one of your strong branches, and I delighted in watching my kids fly high to touch your leaves screaming and laughing. You remained a central jewel in my inner and outer landscape.
In 2008, my mother was dying of cancer, and she was forced to sell our childhood home. My sister and I spent ten days with her, sorting through the accumulations of fifty years. I dealt with the sale of the house, but I was not prepared for what occurred.
We had many interested buyers, all who offered cash for the property. The city of Arcadia had been transformed over the preceding decade by wealthy newcomers. They were interested in the properties they bought, but not the house or the landscaping. Generally, the houses were demolished and the yard and all living things growing there were scraped by bull dozers. In their place came mega-mansions and wide cement driveways, with the mansion surrounded by locked iron gates.
Every single potential buyer who looked at mom’s house, never asked to see the inside. They wanted to look at the yard and many asked what kind of tree you were. They were afraid you might be an oak because oak trees could not be cut down in Arcadia without a permit. My heart was breaking because I could see your destiny.
My final goodbye to you was when my sister and I and our mom were leaving our childhood home for the last time. I got out of the car and walked to the gate that opened to the yard. There you stood, your branches higher than our roof and the shade from you spreading, covering the yard. The boards of my treehouse were gone, except one hanging by a nail. The swing had been sold to a neighbor. I stretched my arms across your weathered, deeply lined trunk and felt sick knowing what was going to happen. I imagined your branches breaking as you crashed to the ground.
I never returned to 357 Woodruff Avenue, knowing what I would see if I did.
-Amy Brewster
Amy Brewster is a writer who has written essays, short stories, poems, and articles for many years. She was a guest columnist with the Salinas Californian. She writes articles about history, nature, and notable people for the Sandpaper, a newsletter published by the Anza-Borrego Natural History Association. One of her stories was published in the magazine, The Good Old Days. She is a retired teacher and is currently working on a book about the history of Borrego Springs, a small town in the middle of Anza-Borrego State Park in California.