The Magnolia Tree

She walked aimlessly down the row of tiny trees tucked snugly in their pots and placed a hand on her stomach feeling a bit sick and uneasy. She had filled her cart with a random selection of indoor and outdoor plants but nothing was clicking. She wasn’t sure what to pick. She wasn’t even sure what she was doing here. It had seemed like a good idea, but then again, the second piece of chocolate cake had seemed like a good idea too. Now here she was nauseous, overwhelmed, and tired. Oh so very tired. The kind of tired that she would henceforth associate solely with either pregnancy or imminent death. She was having trouble focusing on the plants. All of the green leaves ran together like a wild abstract painting that she couldn’t decipher. 

She had only moved back to Texas a few weeks ago. Not long enough to readjust to the heat. Sure Los Angeles got hot, but not the sticky humid heat that slopped itself heavily across the south in the height of summer. She sometimes fantasized about hacking through the solid mass of it with a machete; a warrior sent to free the fresh, breathable air that it must be holding captive somewhere. She missed L.A. No, it wasn’t as glamorous as most young Thespians with stars in their eyes imagined, but she had loved it. She hadn’t been an aspiring actress, just a programmer. Still it had been her big adventure, a romp across the country, an enlightenment. The classic tale of a small town girl in a big city. She had met so many people from so many places. She didn’t run into the same five people at the supermarket who wanted to know how her dad’s mysterious mole removal had gone or how retirement was treating her mother. She had loved the fast shifting terrain. The way you could get to the beach or the mountains or even Las Vegas in just a few hours time, driving recklessly along the windy mountain passes or the Pacific Coast Highway. She had loved sinking her toes into the warm sand on the beach and downing bottomless mimosa brunches like her liver didn’t need to make it another fifty years. She had loved the beautiful purple Jacaranda that bloomed throughout her old neighborhood, carpeting the sidewalks in petals for her to walk on like she was a blushing bride. It all seemed orchestrated to keep her young and vivacious.

There were benefits to being here in Texas though. For one, it would always be home, even when her heart yearned for other places. Her family was here, for better or for worse, but the true perk was that she had her own backyard. She could plant whatever she wanted. She could grow things and that was power. It was control. She could be the god of her garden. An intriguing prospect for a woman in free fall. So that was why she was here in the garden center looking at trees, she reminded herself. 

“Power. Control. God of your garden,” she repeated to herself, but the voice in the back of her head just scoffed. 

“No.” it said matter of factly. “No, that’s not why you’re here, and we both know it. You’re here because you’re just another bored housewife with nothing better to do.” 

A trope that felt more like a trap. This was the voice that had been plaguing her ever since she had quit her job to move home and have a baby. When she shopped for groceries, when she cooked dinner, when she folded laundry, and when she mopped the floors, it was there to taunt her. 

Except it wasn’t just in her head. The number one question people liked to ask her now that she was unemployed was, “So what do you do all day?”, to which some funny jokester always liked to reply, “Spend her husband’s money!” and then cackle like a couple of drunk hyenas. 

She told herself that growing gardens and babies were both worthy goals. Time well spent. Noble work. But the voice in the back of her head didn’t always like to listen, and other real life people didn’t always agree. She had made her old friends from work promise they would stage an intervention if she started selling lipstick or leggings online. But they weren’t here. They were back in L.A, and she spent most days completely  alone. She had known this would not be an easy change for her. She had seen the ennui coming from a mile away, but that didn’t make it any easier. The truth was, she was struggling. Perhaps she had underestimated just how indoctrinated to capitalism she really was. After all, she didn’t need the money. Her husband made plenty to support them both. What she NEEDED was the self worth that was subconsciously attributed to the act of making money.  She felt the desperate draw of it at the strangest times. It was driving through McDonald’s and coveting the job of a 16 year old who probably had a stranger spit on them today. It was the pang of jealousy as she watched a waitress swipe a tip off of one of her tables, pocketing the little bits of existential value. She couldn’t deny it now. She was a junky for making money and quitting cold turkey had left her itchy, twitchy, unsettled and aimless. Being unemployed felt like being naked in public. She wanted to be proud of her choices, but even if she was, it still wasn’t a socially acceptable thing to do. Not making money… on purpose?? in America?? Blasphemous! 

How was she supposed to view herself? How could she place value in her current position of full time breeding stock?  She was a feminist for God’s sake. Logically she knew there was societal value to the act of bearing and raising children. But women were supposed to be seen as so much more than that! Was she betraying her sex by quitting her job?  Would the world ever be able to view her as capable of working even if she chose not to?  Women these days were supposed to have it all, a promising career and a brood of healthy, well adjusted children, but that hadn’t really been an option. L.A. was always meant to be a temporary stop in the life she shared with her husband whom she loved dearly. They had lived in a one bedroom apartment, each commuted an hour in opposite directions, and the cost of living was sky high. It was never going to be conducive to raising a child together. So she had quit her job as planned. They had moved back home as planned. And they had gotten pregnant shockingly quickly. Everything was going according to plan! So why did she feel like she was being forced to breathe through the world’s tiniest straw. Stay at home mom? What was she thinking? It wasn’t too late. She could get a job now. But who would hire her? Pregnant, throwing up all day long, falling asleep sitting up, expecting maternity leave in 7 months? She wasn’t even sure she could get through an interview, much less eight hours a day. 

She stopped walking and took a deep breath. She was not going to have a panic attack in the garden center. She shook her head and forced herself to focus on the plant in front of her. A magnolia tree. The nostalgia hit hard. She curled her toes in her sandals. She could almost feel the smooth bark of the branches under her feet. Magnolia trees were the best climbing trees. The one in the front yard of her childhood home had been her refuge. It was the place she had gone every time she had run away from home. She would climb and climb as high as the second story of the house, sometimes even a little higher. She remembered the feeling, the freedom. She chased it then just as she chased it now. Her chest soared, so akin to the first breath she took after doing her inhaler in the midst of an asthma attack. The ability to simply breathe easy, restored and reclaimed. The loosening of tension she didn’t even realize she had been carrying. Climbing a tree was leaving behind anxiety, fear, the petty judgment, and bitchy questions. To be in a tree is to be a part of nature, and nature doesn’t worry about these things. Nature isn’t capitalist. It just lives. She suddenly found herself wondering why adults didn’t climb more trees. She almost smiled as she imagined herself asking her doctor for permission to climb a tree while pregnant.

Her husband helped her plant the new magnolia tree in their backyard that evening. She sat in a rickety camping chair admiring it as the sun set golden and pink in the distance. For the first time since she saw those two little lines on the pregnancy test, she felt excitement instead of fear. She would have this baby, and she would teach them to climb trees. She would teach them about all the beautiful things in the world. She would teach them to love animals, to care for things and take joy in watching them grow. That would be her legacy. And it would be enough, whether she ever got a job again or not.