The Elbow Tree

Betsy

I love my husband, more than I could probably ever put into words. I think that’s why it was so hard for me to tell him the news. When I told him, I could see the devastation in his eyes as his worst fears were confirmed. But his eyes were the only part of his face that showed me how he was feeling. The rest of his face remained stoic and brave. “I’m here for you Bets, whatever you need” was all he said. I hugged him tightly. In this moment I could tell he needed it more than me. Breast cancer was what I had always feared. It had taken my mother from me, and I didn’t want it to do the same to my children. I was going to fight, I had no doubt about that.

I dreaded the call to my children more than I dreaded telling my husband. I knew he would remain strong and supportive, but I wasn’t sure about my children. Supportive was something that would come easily to them; but I’m their mother. I’m supposed to be the one that they can break down in front of, the one that supports them in their difficult moments, not the other way around. I didn’t want them to have to deal with my pain. I even considered not telling them and fighting through the chemo on my own. But as soon as I spoke these thoughts to Bill, he shut me down. He said they would be angry if they didn’t know, or they found out too late. They would regret the moments that they didn’t spend with me, the days that they canceled lunch or said they were too busy to bring the grandkids over. He was right, I knew he was. So I started with my eldest daughter. She reacted in a way that didn’t shock me, I heard a small gasp over the phone followed by a pause. I could hear her gulp before she said “I’m so sorry mom, please let me know how I can help.”

My second daughter did what I feared, she broke down in tears. I made sure to tell her in person, I knew she would need more support. I hugged her while she sobbed, and when she finally pulled herself together, she told me how much she loved me and offered to move in to help me through treatment. Of course I told her that wouldn’t be necessary. She feels things so deeply, and she always needs to express those feelings. I love her dearly, but I could never handle all that emotion while going through treatment. My oldest, I knew she would need silence, time to think, time alone to digest. But for my middle child, I knew I would need the space.

My last call was to my son. The youngest of the three, and the most carefree. Half of the time we didn’t even know where he was, he’s always traveling. So I told him one night that he needed to call me over Skype. I watched his face slowly change as he digested the information. His hand ran over his face and then he asked “what do you do now?” I told him my treatment plan and all the facts. For someone who was always so hard to pin down, he was very invested in the next step for this. By the end of the call he told me he loved me and that he knew I was strong enough to get through this.

I’m grateful to have so much support, and I thought about this as I reached across the couch and took Bill’s hand. Together we would be okay. We always had been, since we were young.

We met as teenagers, while I was sitting under my favorite tree in Ivory Park. I liked to go there to escape from the noise of my siblings and draw. It allowed me to leave reality for a moment. One day, I was drawing a bouquet of poppy flowers when I was shocked by a young man who had walked around from the other side of the tree trunk with a guitar. He introduced himself and played me a song, and the rest is history. We would meet at that tree every week, he called it the “elbow tree” because of this huge branch that had grown out of the right side at an odd angle. It looked just like a bent elbow. Sometimes I would sit in the crook of the “elbow”, working on my drawings and listening to him sing. Just a few years later, we got married under that same tree. It was a spot that brought so much happiness and so many memories. In this moment I was more grateful for those memories and our history than anything else.

Cameron

Mom likes to bring me to the park on the weekends. She sits with my “Aunt” Shelly (she’s not really related to us, she’s just my mom’s best friend) on the bench and they just talk for what feels like forever, about things that don’t really matter. Adult stuff that I don’t understand. While they talk I run with Shelly’s daughter Lily. We play on the swings and the monkey bars and then we always end up at the crooked tree. This is our favorite spot to run to, because we can climb up it and take turns sitting in the big crooked branch sticks straight out and then points up towards the sky.

Today my mother and my aunt seem different. They told us to run and enjoy ourselves and give them some quiet time. My aunt usually runs around the playground with us, climbing the monkey bars, racing us across the sand, and helping us jump up in the crooked tree. Mom calls it an elbow tree – but we don’t really understand what that means, so we stick with the crooked tree. Lily and I run to it now, and climb up until we get to the crooked part. We sit on it together and Lily pulls out a piece of chalk from her pocket. She tells me she snuck it from her house and she thought we could use it to play tic-tac-toe on the tree. She’s really smart like that.

We play a few rounds of it and she wins each one. We keep playing and then she says “Is your mom okay? My mom said she’s sad, because of your grandma being sick.” I’m confused when I hear this. “My grandma isn’t sick!” Lily says funny things sometimes.

Lily didn’t mention it again, but I didn’t forget. Why would she say that my Grandma was sick? I knew she wasn’t, I just saw her the other day. She and Grandpa Bill took me out to get frozen yogurt. I love going out with them, my Grandma always lets me get as many gummy bears as I want and she never tells mom.

When I’m back in the car with mom, I ask her about it. “Mom, Lily said that Grandma is sick. I told her she’s wrong.”

My mom looks surprised and then she nods her head and tells me that actually, Lily is right. She tells me about a thing called cancer but she says that grandma will be just fine. She says they caught the cancer early. So I guess that means they caught it and took it away early in the morning, which is better than late at night. And now she’s going to be fine, so I probably shouldn’t worry. But something about my mom makes me feel like it’s maybe not that simple. She looks sad though, so I just stop asking questions.

Mary Alice

I escape to the park near my apartment to get out of my head and just read. The park is called Ivory Park. I always thought it was a nice name.

There is a tree that I sit under and read a book. It’s kind of far back and looks a little odd. I’ve gone to it for silence and for room to think since I was a teenager. I had a rough home life, my dad was always drinking, and my mom was always ignoring it. Coming to this tree to read always allowed me to forget about that for a while.

I’m not sure why this tree grew the way that it did, but it has one big branch that comes off of the side of the tree that is bent. When you look at it, it’s almost a perfect right angle. When I was younger and didn’t care about what happened to my clothes, I used to climb the tree so that I could sit on the branch, it made the perfect seat. These days I’ve realized my clumsiness and the cost of clothes as a combination that I can’t afford.

I’ve been in school for what seems like forever, just so I can continue to be in school. I’m currently a student teacher for a class of second graders. They are so creative and excited about life every day. They give me a new found level of energy.

I decided to teach because I wanted to give back to future generations, give them the support that I felt was lacking during my own childhood. In my free time I like to write. I submit short stories to online magazines. Nobody has bought one yet, but I haven’t given up. I want to publish a novel one day, but I have yet to find my inspiration for a story. I continue to visit this tree in hopes that I will have inspiration strike one day.

On Thursday after school I go to the park to just breathe for a little while, and I begin to make a beeline for the right angle tree. I pause and realize that there is an older couple standing underneath the tree. They are staring up at that crooked branch and holding one another, a mutual understanding of significance. I take a few steps back and decide to let them have this moment. I find a bench and sit down there instead.

As I’m watching continuing to watch this couple I hear a voice behind me say “Hi Miss Mary!” I turn around and see one of my students, Cameron. I smile and say hi and look up at his mother. Her face is solemn and her eyes look like they are begging to allow emotion to be released. Every other time I’ve seen her, she’s always been fairly serious and polite. I’ve never seen an ounce of emotion in her face. She says hi and asks me how I’m doing, but I can tell she doesn’t care what the answer is. Not out of indifference towards me, but out of preoccupation with her thoughts. She glances over at the tree and guides Cameron towards it.  

I stay on the bench and look over at my tree, the one I’ve always looked to for direction and grounding. I watch Cameron and his mom walk up to the elderly couple and they all embrace. They talk, they laugh, and for a little while, they cry. As they talk, I see another woman walk up to them. Her eyes are red and teary, but seeing the four of them in this spot brings a smile to her face. She walks up to the group and hugs the elderly woman for an extended amount of time. Then she pulls out a blanket from her bag and they spread it out on the ground. They all sit together under the tree for a while and I just watch. I watch until one more person arrives. A young man suddenly runs past me straight to the tree, it’s obvious he’s been here several times, even though I’ve never seen him around town. The elderly woman gasps and stands to embrace him. They’ve all started crying again, but I can tell it’s out of happiness at this point. They must be surprised to see him. They all stare at the tree, listen to stories and continue to be overwhelmed by the feelings they have with each other.

I know nothing about this family, but I felt connected to them through this moment, through their emotions and through this tree. It’s beautiful. This was the story that I always wished I could live in as a child. This connection and this love between a family members. It’s not as common as it should be in this world, and it’s something that should never be taken for granted.

And in that moment, I found my inspiration. I found my story. I found it through this tree, this tree that brings comfort, memories and love to so many. I took out my laptop, and I began to write.