My Mom and the Tree
MOM used to say, “How nice it would be if people could live like trees!”
She always used trees as criteria when talking about humanity and the world. To her, trees were mystical to the extent that they should be enshrined and worshiped as deities.
A poplar grew near our outhouse which, for as long as I could remember, stood broad and tall. It seemed possessed of boundless strength, and the bark on its trunk had burst open long before I started primary school. It seemed to me that the tree’s exuberance made it grow so fast that its bark could not keep pace with its interior.
As my mother kept vigil near the outhouse one day when I had tummy trouble, she patted the poplar on the trunk and said, “Well, this tree must be thinking to itself, ‘where I grow is the planter’s business, but how well I grow is up to me.’ How nice it would be if all people thought this way!”
Seeing that I was bewildered, she explained, “Look, it is planted neither in the yard nor by the gate, so few people take notice of it. Still it grows vigorously. If it thought like a person it would definitely nurse a grievance, right? Hmm, you’re too young to understand.”
To think that a lousy tree growing by an outhouse should merit such praise! I was still puzzled.
There were two trees in our yard. Someone had threaded a steel wire through bamboo tubes and fixed them between the two trees as a washing line on which to dry our clothes and air our bedding. I still remember the first time I helped mom to hang out the washing: I stood on a stool and raised my arms as high as I could to hang up the clothes, only to find the line was out of reach. Meanwhile water from the soaking-wet clothes trickled down my arms onto my clothes. “Try to find another way,” Mom encouraged me cheerfully, “Just get the clothes on the wire and it’ll be done.” So I gave the clothes a mighty swing, and they landed on the line.
Mom also used to speak reverently of the two trees in our yard. “How sturdy the bark is! The wire has cut into the trunk and drawn sap, but the tree is so tough that it keeps on growing despite the deepening cut. If this happened to a man, he would doubtless see his situation as hopeless, and give up. ”
When the TV series Soldiers Sortie was broadcast, the character Xu Sanduo received high commendation from the media for his tenacity. Mom’s comment was simple and clear, “He is just like our trees, paying no heed to scars and concentrating solely on growing.”
Mom would also often point at the crooked tree near the doorway while scolding me, so bringing into sharp focus the misdeeds of my childhood.
As a child I would dash home every day after school as if running a 100-metre sprint, throw down my schoolbag and jump from the doorway stairs as high as I could to grab and swing on the tree branches. I would, of course, compete with the chubby girl who lived opposite. But, unlike our big trees, the ones in her yard were within arm’s reach from the ground, so I always put her in the shade because my swings had greater momentum.
Once mom caught me swinging and tried to stop me, but I would not let go of the branch, and swung even higher. Calling me “Little madcap,” she left me alone. As time went by, the branch I swung on became bent, and later the whole tree looked crooked.
The year I failed the college entrance examination, I was truly dispirited. Ashamed to go out, I spent all day at home. Mom spoke to me again of the tree near the doorway, “What a strong character! After being bent, it grew in a strange twisted shape; when one branch was broken, it grew new ones on the other side. Trees have no idea what will happen to them, but whatever it might be, they still keep growing. We should be as strong as trees.”
Then mom talked of our neighbor, a woman in her 80s who had been afflicted with great misery, but who faced her grim situation as would a tree. Her son died suddenly before he was 30, and her daughter-in-law remarried, leaving her infant boy with her mother-in-law. The grandmother took great pains to bring up the boy till he was 18. But just before the kid went to college, he went swimming with friends and accidentally drowned.
“After so many years, you can see that the granny is still full of vigor, right? She has come to the conclusion that since she is destined to be alone, she must live the best she can on her own. No one can foresee what will happen in the future, so we should endure the hard times as they come, like a tree.”
Mom used to liken things in life to trees, and gradually I also acquired this way of thinking. Mom has now passed away, but I still like interpreting life in this way.
Every autumn, countless falling leaves settle in the dust, and become part of it. Year in year out, leaves turn green and then wither. Being parted from our loved ones by death is unbearable for us, so if leaves are the children of trees, there is probably a heart full of sadness inside every tree.
Although overwhelmed with sorrow after mom’s death, I know I still need to live on as best I can. Because every time I look around, I can see trees, and I can see my mom standing under each one.
