A Tree Grows in the Glebe

Many lifetimes ago, when Jaime and I lived in Centretown, we would often go for walks to the Glebe in the spring.  We loved the Glebe because it was filled with flowering trees in the spring  – lilac, apple and cherry blossoms, magnolia.  All stunning pinks and purples and whites, some with beautiful fragrances, some with just pure visual beauty.  The flowers were short-lived, often for just a few days in the month of May.  And then with a rough wind, they would disappear, re-integrating with the earth.

I always loved those trees.

When we finally bought a house in the Glebe, there was a beautiful, old apple tree in the backyard.  For a few days in May, it would flower. One year, I was lucky enough to have a cold during the days the tree flowered and I stayed home for two days, just looking at it.  I cried when the blooms were gone.  And I was sad about the tree when we sold that house.

Last spring, as I was waiting and healing and wondering what the universe was trying to tell me and wanted me to do, I remembered a favourite book I had read in childhood – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  One of my favourite teachers Sister Murphy gave me a copy of the book when I was in Grade 6.  I loved that book.  I loved Francie!  She had such indomitable spirit, growing up in poverty and learning about love and life.  I read the book again and again.  Last winter, I picked up the book again for comfort and came upon the afterword written by the author Betty Smith.  She wrote that to have a truly meaningful life, one must: plant a tree, raise a child, and write a book.  (She explained that she didn’t necessarily mean these things literally.  For example, writing a book could be a metaphor for working industriously at anything.)

However, I do want to do those three things, so I decided that, if I lived, I would try to follow Betty’s path for a meaningful life. 

I am blessed to have two beautiful children to raise, so I think I am well covered for that.  I wish I could have or adopt another - I really do - but I can't. So I did what I can do. Sponsor a little girl Nandini in India. Maybe I am making some difference in her life.  Maybe one day I will meet her.

I have always wanted to write a book, and writing has always been part of my life.  In school, I would always be writing short stories and pestering my teachers to read them.  I had a notebook filled with stories about my fictional character Julie Anderson and her crush on “Brian”.  In high school, my English teacher told me that I was the most talented student he had ever had in his 40 year career, and he wrote on my work “This could and should be published.”  And yet I did not continue to write enough or try to get published.  A friend reminded me the other day about a literary journal I started years ago when I published lots of other writers and I got to know all kinds of writers from Ottawa and beyond.  Yet, I still haven’t published anything or written my novel.  I have plans to change that.  Bold plans.  If I live. 

Last spring, Jaime and I decided we would plant a tree.  A magnolia.  The only problem was that our house faces north and we can’t plant anything in our south-facing backyard because there is no grass or soil there, only asphalt and an enormous, ugly quadruple garage that we can’t do anything about because it is a structure shared with our neighbours (who like the garage).  A gardener friend and I walked all the streets of the Glebe last year and noticed that none of the magnolia trees were on the south side of the streets.  Nonetheless, on Mother’s Day last year, we went out to Knipple Nursery and picked out a baby magnolia.  We asked if it would survive facing north.  Preferably, it would face south, but the Glebe has a micro-climate, so maybe, maybe, it would survive.  So we planted the tree, our baby, on the cold and windy Mother’s Day of last year.  Though we do not know much about gardening or planting trees (or apparently even that you are supposed to get a permit for planting a tree!), we watered it and we nurtured it and we loved it.  We planted a little garden around it, planting bulbs for spring flowers last fall, in the dark, Amrita and I, with a flashlight, our hands freezing.  In the cold of winter, we wrapped the magnolia and we talked about it often all winter, wondering and hoping that it would survive.

After a long winter, and a cold and rainy spring, this Mother’s Day, the very first blooms burst out from our Magnolia.  By the end of the week, the tree was brimming with beautiful white flowers with a deep pink inside.  So beautiful.  Everyone who walked by smiled and told us how lovely it was.  Every chance we got, Jaime and I admired our tree and took pictures of it.  Our tree.  Planted with our own bare hands. 

Our magnolia survived, against the odds, on the wrong side of the street, blessed by a fortunately and unlikely micro-climate, nurtured with our love.  And bloomed.     

Now the blooms have already started to fall from the tree.  The rain is supposed to come in tonight, and rough winds with it.  The flowers will be gone, maybe by tomorrow, but will leave green leaves of life for the rest of the summer.  And then those too shall fall.  Another winter will come.  Another threat.  We will wrap it again, and pray for it and hope.  Hope that it survives another winter and another threat.

And blooms again.