Only a Moss-Covered Tree

I stand, arm wrapped around the pillar, watching the rain shower the grass in gentle waves. This being Florida it seems to me that it shouldn’t rain quite this much, and yet here I am. The cool breeze off of the droplets bathes my face, begging me to forget the chaos inside the single-story white house. Sure visiting family is great, especially when I haven’t seen them in over two years, but my cousins have too much energy for introverted me to handle. Their mothers and grandmothers and aunts chat while they chop vegetables and boil eggs for the salad, while the men sit on bar stools sipping frigid Pepsi and discussing… whatever they’re discussing. Tools or adventure sports or football, which I’ve never cared two beans about.

So I’m back to watching the rain on my great-aunt’s screened-in porch, listening to the droplets bathe the course Florida greenery. My thoughts keep flitting back and forth under the rain, following tangents about school and college and school reunions and family reunions and visiting friends and family and second cousins twice removed and just wanting to be home in my room with my little window cactus and my cat, no matter how scorching hot it gets. And here I am, back at the beginning, closing my eyes against the cool drops.

My eyes are drawn to a massive tree beyond my great-aunt’s backyard shed. The trunk is gnarled and twisted and rough. The foliage extends into the falling gray of the sky. Soft grey Spanish moss clothes every outstretched branch, covering it in a silvery coat fit for any wizard. It pulls my mind to the Ents of Fangorn, great silent shepherds of the trees, ancient and solemn and fully present.

I wonder what its story is…

The Tree stands in the center of the forest for millennia. It grows, slowly, extending wizened arms over the undergrowth. Thousands of civilizations spring up beneath those branches. They spread and wink out in a constant wheel before my eyes, an endless cycle of beauty and loss. The Tree draws its mantle around itself. Its center grows heavier with each death, with each fall, with each lost possession. The years wear on its crinkled eyelids, until they finally close. The years slow, the homes sprout, and the Tree is just a tree.

I shiver, rubbing at the goosebumps on my arms, and consider going in for my jacket. But no, it lays across the arms of the white wicker bench, and my assorted cousins are busy restlessly chattering and banging and watching Winnie the Pooh for me to go anywhere near there. So I turn back to the tree and resolve to wait for supper. It’s sure to be good.