tree, hugging

This tree sits in my neighbor's yard. I pass it almost everyday, and everyday I generally ignore it. But yesterday was Arbor Day, a day set aside for celebrating and tending to trees. It was the 138th year of this American celebration. And so to mark it, I stopped for a moment to visit this tree.

It is intriguing. Whether it is one tree split in two, or two trees that come together as one, I will leave to my arborist friends to determine.

But I love the sensual intimacy that the tree evokes, and the romantic, if sad, story that it seems to capture about a couple who lived on our street until very recently.

This husband and wife were one of the first families to build and move here back in the 1950's when this neighborhood was first developed. They chose a wooded lot on the far side of the circle.

For 60 years they lived there. During the entire time that I grew up, rode my bike past their home, went off to college, got married, became a rabbi, worked in New York City, had kids and came home again to settle on the same street where I grew up, they were here.

By the time I returned, they were both in their eighties. I do not ever remember meeting them. But they were a stable part of our neighborhood. Until two weeks ago.

By then, they had both progressed into their nineties, and both were failing. She died first; he followed just three days later. Their obituaries sit side by side in the same issue of the Baltimore Jewish Times, one after the other in alphabetical order, the names of the grieving family members listed first for him, then for her. Neither obituary acknowledges the other.

But the tree does. The tree seems to capture the essence of their story. Two trunks, two independent lives, irrevocably and intimately connected, standing apart but leaning ever closer toward each other, season after season, year after year, until the two ultimately merge into one. Their children and loved ones wrapping themselves around this joining. Roots running deep; canopy full and sheltering.

If our lives could indeed be reflected in a tree, this, I would suggest, embodies theirs.