A Tree Grows In Oakville

There’s this tree. I pass under it almost every day on the trek to and from school. Most days, I barely notice it. But come spring time, when its leaves first appear – I am on high alert for the barely noticeable pink blooms poking their way into the world. Each morning, I eagerly check on its photosynthetic process until eventually the blooms spill forth. In that fragrant moment, that tree is the most beautiful thing in the world.

If I’m lucky – I’ll get two, sometimes three days with it.

But eventually, one morning I’ll walk by and the blooms will have transformed overnight into confetti strewn about the grass and sidewalk – then nothing more than soggy brown scraps. The tree is back to being just another ordinary tree once again.

If I was the type of person to have a favourite tree – then this would be it.

There have been a couple of stormy springs where the slashing rain and whipping wind stripped the tree of its pink glory before the blooms ever had the chance to mature. A disappointment to be sure – but nothing I didn’t get over. God willing, there will always be next year.

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The blooms of this tree mark a strangely organic anniversary for me – it’s the beginning of the end of yet another school year. Irrefutable evidence that time marches on, that kids are getting older, that like it or not I’m another year closer to everything changing.

With one child about to embark high school, another one inching toward teendom and a third just about to request that I no longer accompany him on the walk to and from school – I realize that soon it will be a concerted effort on my part to seek out the tree and bask in its tentative few days of breathtaking beauty.

There is something deeply comforting in knowing that the new year may bring change but I can count on this tree’s beauty to get me through it all. Even though deep down, there is always the worry that this bloom will be its last. After all, it is a living thing with only a finite number of years left. And we live in a world with lightning and wind and storms and even erratic drivers. Where tree roots can interfere with underground pipes and cables and any other example of our manmade progress .

But like I tend to do, I push these worries to the back of my mind. I wake the kids up, we head to school and on a good day, my friend Sue will walk back home with me and the dog, pushing her son’s bike along the way. We’ll discuss the books we are reading and the movies we are watching. On an okay day, I’ll walk home alone wth my thoughts and the company of a dumb dog.

I may take notice of the tree – a robust thing with a million branches and dark green leaves. Or I’ll be engrossed in my conversation and pass under it – taking its stoic beauty for granted. Until the cycle begins again next May and I begin to anticipate the forthcoming splendour soon followed by its inevitable slow fade.

There’s something to be said about living an ordinary life most days – to be rewarded with a few days of exquisite beauty.

A tree grows in Oakville. Most days its lost in the forest – but every once in a while it’s absolutely the most wonderful thing in the world. There’s a lesson in that somewhere.

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