My friend’s phone rang.

When she answered, another friend asked, “Is Karen just devastated?”

The bark looked the same.

Skin of decades.  

Protecting.  

Rough and furrowed.

Covering — like lined up and laid out potato chips, the wavy edges lifted as if exfoliating, peeling open trails that if followed could share stories from every season.  

Seasons of life. 

Life from the time of whoever planted the tree to now. 

The stories from my time include my kid’s early steps on scratchy San Augustine grass; our first Christmas playing in shorts; games of baseball, art projects, and kids camps; hours of yard work, fun with the dog, and time playing around the pond where every goldfish is a legacy of parents won at the elementary school fair. 

In the background of countless photos recording milestones in my family’s life stands the tree. 

The stories it could tell, if it could.

But now the tree stretched horizontal.

The bark that protected years of concentric circles could not protect from the storm.

Seconds of wind toppled decades of life.

I missed the falling. 

I was in Comfort, having arrived two hours earlier for a planned four-day stay. 

Before reaching the ranch I stopped at the 8th Street Market where my coffee shop friends were abuzz about a flash storm.

Minutes before they couldn’t hear each other speak over the sound of violent rain pounding on the metal roof. Outside, chairs flew in all directions. Water fell in sheets to shrieks of fear, like the tractor bucket water dumped on my kids to shrieks of fun.

I hurried from town to the ranch, anxious about finding storm damage.

Through the gate, I sensed the still — of rain-cooled air, silent bird chirp, and standing water over saturated soil — as if the pulse of nature paused from the storms passing and hadn’t yet started back up.

My ride around the ranch disclosed no damage on the ground but offered a stunning display over head. 

The sky was breathtaking, the last of darkness clearing, replaced by magnificent, billowing clouds, towering as if to convince that goodness prevails over our storms.

 

In thunderous quiet, I gazed,

captivated,

primed to see power in the view.

The week before, a stop by Cheever’s Used Books uncovered an old copy of “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.” My reading started with Emerson’s essay on Nature, so words of inspiration were fresh in my thoughts.

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson.

How these clouds — envoys of beauty and inaccessible like the stars — were opening my mind.

I adored as if they were making a once in a thousand year appearance. 

I studied with a “poetical sense in the mind” and with “integrity of impression” which, Emerson writes, “distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet.”

 

What a beginning to four days in Comfort!

My phone rang.

I thought I heard calm, as if talking about an ordinary day. “Mom, it’s Jimmy. We just had a big storm in San Antonio.”

Excitedly, I replied, “Yes! There was a big storm in Comfort too.”

Then, I sensed his hesitation, apprehensive to tell me the news.

“Ya… well… it blew over two trees…” 

PAUSE

“two of the big pecans in our front yard… the giant one by the pond… the pond is destroyed.”

GASP

 

He assured me that he and the house were fine, and I hurried to the car to head home. 

First, I drove down the gorge to the lake, the only way to tell Jim the news. Cell service doesn’t reach his fishing spot, a zone protecting his bliss from disruption, but my tires spitting rocks announced an end to fishing for the day. 

Jim put away his pole, collected the chainsaw, and followed me home. 

Constant phone calls and dizzying thoughts filled the hour drive to San Antonio, while friends and neighbors gathered in the street, gawking at the two massive trees blocking the road.

My best friends were describing the scene and warning, “you will cry.” 

Between calls, my mind raced through memories. 

I remember my first walk through the picket gate, standing under the canopy of pecans, the shade casting a cool and enchanting sense of place. At the base of the largest pecan, the melodic song of water softly splashing into the pond reflected a spirit of life I dreamed of for our Texas home. 

After viewing the house I called my mother-in-law, a top Houston realtor, to get her advice. She listened as I listed all the features the house was missing, until she heard enough and curiously interrupted, “so why do you want to buy this house?” 

Despite the unchecked check boxes for what we were looking for in our new home, I knew why. 

“Because it feels special, like the house is sitting in a serene park with a storybook shady front yard.” 

It was the trees.

I couldn’t imagine them gone.

We’ve lived in the house for twenty-one years, and the stories collected since that first visit are compiled works of fun, laughs, and love, along with sadness, tears and loss.  

By the time I arrived home, the hour recalling stories brought perspective and composure. 

I pulled up to canopies of pecans piled in the street in a tangled mass of leaves and branches. 

Jimmy had rescued the fish from the collapsed pond and was working to clear a path through the road.

 

He slowed and watched me as I looked on the fallen trees, and for the first of many times he asked, “are you ok?”

With a present tug of a mother’s primal power to feel her child’s concern, I locked eyes and assured him all was fine.

Jim arrived with the chainsaw, and a city work crew showed up with heavy equipment.

They attacked like jungle warfare, cutting through dense vegetation steaming from humidity, fighting paradoxes of destroying what is destroyed, enjoying what is painful, and cleaning up what can never go away.

The scene was surreal, captured in photos for a predicted insurance claim and also to remember.

In the dark of that first night without the trees, we walked outside and looked to the sky through a new opening. 

For the first time from our front yard we saw the admonishing smiles of the stars — Emerson’s envoys of beauty — and we adored and believed.

Cleanup and assessment consumed the next two days. 

Along with the lost pond and pecans, a large branch from the backyard black walnut fell on the roof and another branch blocked the back walkway. The storm fried the electrical panels on the garage door opener and TV stereo receiver. 

Could have been worse.

Then, on the third day following the storm came another flash weather event. As the rain poured and the wind swirled, I watched out our glass front door with fear and reflection.

Without the massive canopies of the fallen trees, the two remaining pecans swayed with a new vulnerability — lopsided and unprotected. 

For generations the canopies of the four pecans grew and became one, networked together over head as a single umbrella of branches and leaves — years of standing together against sun, and rain, and wind; years of serving together doses of shade, fruit, beauty, and comfort.

Those years of history are recorded in the wide and narrow spaces between the rings now exposed by the fallen. 

For days, the fallen tree wept.

Now, the two that outlived the storm must continue the story of withstanding and serving. 

Similarly, our story will grow on, and the spaces marking the years will not be evenly spaced.

While I reflected on how loss awakes to appreciate what was and is, the storm ended without incident… at least in San Antonio.

The next morning my phone rang. 

“Mrs. Greenwood, this is your neighbor in Comfort. We had a big storm last night and there are many fallen trees and damaged roofs. You might want to come check your ranch property.”

Jimmy and Jack drove to Comfort, and an hour later my phone rang. 

Hesitantly, Jimmy reported, “Mom, the house is fine, but many trees are down… well over twenty trees fell across the property… some are big trees… a lot of trees fell in that shady spot just behind the house.”

I headed out the next day.

A mile out from the gate the path of the wind was obvious, a line of destruction pointed toward the ranch houses. I drove along the road while my eye followed a trail of snapped trees.

My clinch on the steering wheel tightened. My emotions held in check but prepared.

Like the drive to San Antonio days before when I raced through memories while anticipating a scene changed, I recalled the careful consideration years before of where to build the ranch houses. 

The site is on a hilltop with 360-degree views with a perfect circle of trees around a rock outcropping. The largest clump of trees, clustered on the southeast edge of the ring, catches the prevailing winds and cools them in their shade, like air passing through an AC coil. 

On the hottest Texas days, this was the site where the grass stayed green and the longhorns lounged in the shade.

So, like the storybook shady front yard that drove the decision to buy our San Antonio home, the shady ring of trees with built in natural air conditioning confirmed the ranch house location and guided the house design. 

Why did we build three separate buildings with porches on all sides set in the center of a ring of shade that cools the hot Texas winds?

It was the trees.

I couldn’t imagine them gone.

For a second time in a week, Jimmy started the cleanup. 

 

He cut and piled trunks and hauled canopies to the caliche pit for burning. 

Again, surreal, and yet again, perspective.

As Jimmy tossed branches into the pit to burn, tears freed.

It was the same pit where a few years before fire flashed and burned Jimmy, marking a year of narrow space between the rings.  (see stories: No Sedum Saturday: When Trials in Life Hurt, and Healing Thanks)

Wider spaces since outlive the memory.

In the days following the cleanup, I walked with my camera along the path of destruction — this time not for insurance but only to remember. 

I photographed each one as a tribute to their time.

What stories over the seasons these trees could tell, if they could. 

 

Readers of Take Comfort know I love children’s literature and cherish my small library of beloved story books. 

Among them is a book titled, A Tree is Nice. It was one of the first books we bought for Alexandra and one I have gifted many times over the years.

The book won the Caldecott Medal in 1957, an award recognizing the artist of the preceding year’s most distinguished American picture book for children. 

The illustrations are delightful, alternating between pages of color and pages of black and white.

 

The language is simple… “Trees are very nice.”

And yet poetic… “The leaves whisper in the breeze all summer long.” 

While it is sweet in its description of a tree, it is profound in its unaffected stories that take place around a tree. 

I treasure the book because every read recalls stories.

At the Lost Madrone Ranch, the experiences of my kids building three story cedar forts, climbing and jumping from the lake tree, swinging from the tank tree, hanging out in the platform tree, or just climbing a tree, are the stories that shaped their childhood — stories written while the rings were being inscribed. 

The stories those trees could tell, if they could.

Recently, I had the honor to view a special library of children’s books, lovingly collected by Melissa.

Melissa has lived alongside my mom for the past six years, in two different homes filled with residents who don’t know where they live. 

Beauty is the mark of Melissa — of looks, will, devotion, character, and spirit. 

I know this first hand from seeing her broad smile and observing her determination as she roams and gathers, making her intent clear.

But, I know this deeper from my dear friendship formed with her husband through the vulnerable spaces of sharing that takes place between family members who care for those with dementia. It is a space only those living in can fully understand.

And over the uncounted hours across years of sharing, we come to know the stories.

Melissa was a collector — of mustard pots, wood finials, tea balls, chicken prints — and she loved and collected children’s literature. 

Her collection is exceptional. 

Over hours on separate occasions, I sat in the upstairs hall of the home Melissa shared with her family, a hall lined with shelves and cabinets that store her books. 

Stacks of decades.

Ordered.

Labeled with notes and catalog clippings.

Exposing — like the wavy bark of the tree that lifted, hinting at trails to stories over seasons, the touch of Melissa’s hand is on every book.

Respectfully, I slid books from their station and flipped through the pages and then returned them as Melissa left them.

The words in children’s books of ages past sing of a simpler time and softly lull as if rocking a child to sleep. I was lost for hours in the language of the stories.

Melissa loved the illustrations, and she worked diligently at collecting Caldecott winners. 

Standing in order from the very first winner in 1938, Melissa’s Caldecott shelf speaks to years of pursuit. 

There are only three places where her shelf has two copies of the winners — the first Caldecott winner titled, Animals of the Bible, the fifth Caldecott winner, Make Way for Ducklings (my very first purchase of a children’s book selected from the newsprint pamphlet of my elementary school scholastic book fair), and the 1957 winner, A Tree is Nice.

Inside one of her two copies of A Tree is Nice, I hear her speak the words of her sticky note. 

I imagine her proudly acquiring the book and reading it while smiling and recalling her stories.

Melissa left notes inside the covers of hundreds of books — an act reflecting her joy, commitment, and care while building her library. 

The notes reveal an active work in progress. 

Today, they are only clues with no one to confirm the answer.

Only one Caldecott winner is curiously missing from the year 2001: So You Want to Be President? 

I searched the stacks and shelves, assured it was just mis-shelved, for it would have been an easy year to collect. Did she loan the book to a grandchild? Was there a reason she never added that year’s winner to her collection? Or, did I not look hard enough and it was there somewhere hidden between her other treasures? 

I wanted to ask Melissa.

From time to time during my visits, Jimmie would walk upstairs to check on me and he would share about the hours Melissa spent on her collection.

When I told him her Caldecott winners stopped at 2010, he replied, “that would be about right.”

Our membership in the dementia caregiving club comes with a trail of longing to know from the living who can no longer tell.

Yes, Melissa’s collection is exceptional — not for the value of the books, but for the stories surrounding the collecting, for the life lived between the rings, spaces both wide and narrow.

The stories she could tell, if she could.

Stories from the seasons.

Seasons of life. 

A Tree is Nice.

My phone rang…