Sometimes A Dream Begins With A Tree

Also, a confession from my childhood crime of ignoring my mother

The magnolia tree I met in Cincinnati.

Last night in Cincinnati we were leaving an event for Sherrod when I looked up and discovered this canopy of giant leaves lighting up the night sky. I turned to the young man who had helped park the cars of more than a hundred hopeful people. “What is this tree?”

He walked over to stand next to me and looked up. “I don’t know,” he said. We continued to stare at it for a moment. “It looks almost tropical,” he said.

The next voice I heard belonged to a man with a gruff demeanor and an oversized heart who bosses us around to keep us safe. “It’s a magnolia,” he said.

“Ahhh,” the young man and I said in unison, as if we had just caught sight of an angel. A nighttime sky of lapis blue can do that to a person, of any age.

I had never seen a magnolia like this in Ohio. I live in Cleveland, about 200 miles north, where the slightly colder climate produces magnolias with leaves that are shy and soft-spoken. This tree was a highway billboard.

As I walked toward the car, a memory floated up and I was transported to a muggy, long-ago night in Georgia. We were attending a large family reunion with Sherrod’s mother, Emily Campbell Brown. This was just weeks after we had married, when my life felt suddenly brand new.

After two hours of hugs from dozens of kind and happy strangers calling me cousin, I needed a breather. I stepped out onto the mile-wide porch, sat on one of its steps, and beheld the largest magnolia tree I had ever laid eyes on. Hundreds of blooms wider than my face were framed by leaves the size of holiday platters. The trunk looked ancient, and was nearly as wide as the yard trying to contain it.  

One of the few family members I already knew, barely, sat down next to me. We were the same age, both of us recent brides, and our conversation is likely why I remember that tree so well. Against the backdrop of raucous joy in the room behind us, we stared up at that beautiful tree and talked about the earthquake of marriage in middle age.

I was so grateful to her in that moment. She helped believe that maybe there was a place for overwhelmed me in this big, boisterous family. Twenty years later, I am grateful for her for many reasons, but especially this one: She is the one person in my life who understands one of the saddest parts of me. No explanation needed, ever.

Right now, I am riding in the back of our campaign car, which has become one of my regular places to write in recent weeks. All those years of writing in a noisy newsroom and, when I was on the road, ferreting out spots near electrical outlets has paid off. I can write just about anywhere. A heavy rain is pounding on the car, rendering the trees outside my window a blur of green with whispers of yellow, orange and red.

Sherrod is sitting in the front passenger seat cheerfully yelling because that’s how he talks on the phone whenever he uses his earbuds. He thinks he’s talking softly. He also thinks he knows how to whisper in a movie theater.

He shares my love of trees, and knows by heart Joyce Kilmer’s poem about them, written in 1915. In this photo from July 2019, he was reciting the poem to our 4-year-old grandson, Milo.

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast….

They were stretched out in the grass under a group of pines at water’s edge in the cove near Milo’s family home in Rhode Island. He giggled throughout Grandpa’s recitation, and imitated his every move. You know those moments when, as you witness them, you know you’ll never forget them? This was one of those.

My love for trees started in childhood, when two of them played an oversized role in my young life. A large apple tree stood just feet away from Mom’s clotheslines, and every fall she ordered all four of us to climb up into the branches to pick enough of the fruit to build a half-dozen of her mile-high pies. We’d fill the large metal basin at the foot of the tree and then two of us would carry it by the handles into the dining room, where she’d sit and peel dozens at a time.

My little brother, Chuckie, was a master at climbing that tree, but he also had a habit of hurling apples at our heads as we reached up to catch them. Every time, we’d scream, and he’d yell, “Accident!”

Thump.

“Accident!”

Thump.

“Accident!”

Thump.

“Accident!”

Nobody believed him except his criminal defense attorney. We called her Mom.

The other tree of my childhood was mine alone. It was a cherry tree that stood in the abandoned, overgrown lot that we called “the field.” It was located behind our house, past the cinder driveway and out of the line of vision of the kitchen window, Mom’s lookout post.

That tree was the perfect hiding place for me, and I needed one. I was the oldest of four, and by the time my brother was born I was the working mule of the family. Connie, do this. Connie, do that.

Connie, go find your brother.

Connie, go find your sister.

Not that sister, the other one.  

Once, on Twitter, a reporter asked people what their families used to call the remote control for their T.V.s.

You know the answer: Connie.

A 10-year-old, ever-obedient girl can take only so much before she wants to break free and become a cowboy. This wasn’t really an option in Ashtabula, Ohio. So, occasionally I would grab whatever library book I was reading, slip out the screen door without slamming it, and climb high into the branches of that cherry tree.

Over time, reading those stories without interruption fueled something deep inside me. Maybe, just maybe, one day I could grow up to write a few stories of my own. High in the sky, I was tempted to believe it.

No one ever knew I was up there. Not Chuckie, not Toni, not Leslie—and most importantly, not Mom. Sometimes I’d be sitting up there reading and I’d hear her yelling for me. “Connie! Connie! Connie Marie, I know you can hear me!” I’d watch her pace the driveway, yelling over to neighbors to see if they’d seen me. With every “no,” my heart would race a little faster, but I never answered her.

Aunt Bee and Andy Griffith, much like Mom and me.

It was the riskiest thing I’d ever done—and I never told my mother. Once, when I was in my late 30s, Mom and I were sitting on her front porch watching my young daughter twirl in her summer dress.

“She reminds me so much of you at that age,” Mom said. She looked at me and tilted her head. “She ever disappear?”

I shifted ever so slightly. “Disappear?”

“Yes,” Mom said, turning to stare at me. “Like, poof she’s gone, and you can’t find her?”

My heart started to pound. “No, no,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “Can’t say that ever happens in our neck of the woods.” I sounded like Andy Griffith talking to Aunt Bee.

Now, you might think that would have been the perfect moment to confess about the cherry tree. It’s possible that I felt the tiniest tug of guilt as she trained her big, blue eyes on me. But that guilt was no match for the loyalty I felt to the little girl whose one big secret ignited the writer in me.