the thin line between optimism and delusion…

My mom called me with some sad news the other day.  One of the enormous hackberry trees in our backyard finally fell down.  According to the tree people, hackberry trees are not suppose to grow as large as ours have, and this is dangerous because hackberrys do not have deep roots, and having a large tree with shallow roots leads to trouble.  We have (or had) 4 or 5 enormous hackberrys all in a bunch inthe far back part of our yard, and they are the focal point of the entire yard, and very pretty.  Mama has been meaning to have them taken down for years. 

This particular tree is on the edge of the bunch, on the left side if you have your back to the house. It had been leaning for years, and in recent months had started to sink.  The sinking was easy to measure, due to the remenants of an old swing still hanging from one of the branches.  All that is left of the old swing is a thick rope, with a loop at the bottom, and a knot about a foot above the top of the loop.  In the past six months the loop has settled into the leaves on the ground. 

Mama is always worried that one of the trees is going to fall on one of us, or even worse, fall on one of the dogs – particularly Bella. 

But in the end it didn’t fall on any of the members of the family.  It fell on a piece of our past.  It fell on the tree house.  Our tree house has actually outlived the other treehouses I grew up in, the Allen’s amazing treehouse fell years ago, and the Nalley’s treehouse also collapsed a while back (although, I think they have both been repaired).  And our treehouse wasn’t suspended in a tree, it was basically a treehouse built from the ground up with a tree growing in the middle of it.  It was actually converted into a dog house/tree house about ten years ago, but the dogs never liked it much and it wasn’t used for that purpose for very long.  Our treehouse was built around a carolina cherry tree, and I have always loved the way carolina cherry trees smell when you break a branch and smell the wood. 

I haven’t been out there very often in the past ten years, but it still made me happy that I could go back there if I wanted.  I’m not at home, so I don’t know the extent of the damage, and maybe it is easier that way.  The last time I did go up there I laughed at the spray paint graffii and the carvings of initials into the wood. 

Oh well, things change.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when they do.