Many Seasons, Many Lives

The wind sighed as the great Oak stood sentinel in the park, watching over the children as they ran around, as he had done for over a century. Of course, he did not know his age, nor did he know where his acorns went, but he knew his power, and he knew the beings which played around him were his own progeny, be they the squirrels which hopped around his branches, or the birds which nested in his crevices and cracks. Or even the humans which climbed him so boldly and scratched his bark. Sometimes, they would rip out chunks of him or cleave off a branch for themselves. But that was okay. He didn’t mind. His life had been long, and he’d seen too many things to mind a little lost bark. 

There was a gentleman who always used to come here with his children. His skin was dark, and his eyes wet as he approached the great Oak. It was always on the same day of October, when the tree was clinging onto his last few leaves before the cold set in. The man would come with a woman who bore a strange rock on her finger, and two young children. The mighty tree recognized the man’s face the first time he’d come, and he didn’t need the man’s words to remind him of why he was there. 

“Kids,” the man had said heavily, “I need you to know why we came here today… why we came to this park.”

The children, recognizing sorrow in their father’s voice, stopped fooling around. 

“You remember I told you about uncle Willy?” They nodded, and he took a sniff before continuing. “Well, there’s a reason he ain’t with us anymore… y’see,” he broke off. 

“Bryant,” said his wife gently. 

“When Uncle Willy and I were about fifteen, the world was a lot different down here. People… hated us. All of us. Not just me and Uncle Billy. One night they… they accused him of somethin’ I know he didn’t do. And there wasn’t a trial… they didn’t even tell the police. They just broke into our home and took him from us. We tried to follow, but they - they beat us down. When we finally found him… he was here-” 

The man could not continue, but he had sobered his children and his wife with the grief emanating from his voice. The oak lowered his branches a little, remembering how tightly the rope was tied around one that night. Would that he could have offered condolences, but the man left the park with his kids. 

They would return every year, until one year it was just the kids and the wife. Then it was just the kids. Most recently, it had been only one child, now a grown man, and there were new tears in his eyes, and the Oak knew they were wrought of a new crime. 

“Nothing changes,” he muttered, turning away after just a few minutes. 

The Oak remembered many ropes were once tied to his branches. Heavy, thick ropes. What those men who tied the ropes to him were doing, the Oak did not like to think about, for while he nurtured so much new life through his acorns and the homes he provided the birds and the beasts, he had also taken many lives in those days. 

Thinking about that would bow the spirit of the great Oak, yet not all the memories in his roots were terrible. Not all were born of hate. Some were born of love. 

One young couple had spent many summer afternoons eating and laughing under the shade of his long, leafy branches. They used to drop their bags and sit with one another for hours, talking in hushed tones and giggling to one another. Then one day the man took out his knife and carved a heart into the great Oak’s thick bark. In that heart he inscribed two strange shapes, “J+A”. The Oak did not know what these meant, but he swelled from the power of their love as they laughed about it. After many moons of this, the couple went away and the Oak did not see them for some time. However, they returned one fine summer morning, with a picnic basket in hand and a glittering clear rock on the woman’s left hand. The Oak sighed with relief, as it’d thought the young couple sundered in their time away. They would spend that day with him, laughing as they once did, recollecting all that had happened in their lives. Then they left, only to return on the same day the following year with a baby in their arms. 

“Oh Tess, the tree’s still here!” said the man excitedly. 

Tess let out an airy laugh, one familiar to both her husband and the great Oak. “Yeah, I can’t believe it. Remember that heart you drew in? I wonder…”

They ran around to the other side and saw that indeed, the heart with the strange inscriptions was still there, however faint. The two sat down under it and began feeding their baby through a bottle, still reminiscing about old times, and looking forward to the future. 

“That new job’s starting in a week, you nervous?” asked the man as he unwrapped a roll.

“Of course I am,” said Tess, “Are you gonna be okay with the baby?”

He shrugged confidently, yet the Oak felt his feet dig roughly into the dirt above his roots. “We’ll be fine. Em and I get along just fine, don’t we?” He tickled the baby’s feet, and the Oak rejoiced in her small, high pitched giggles. 

Tess smiled. “Thanks for doing this… I know it wasn’t easy to give up your old job-”

“Ah, it wasn’t too bad. I mean you can’t be a travel photographer forever. Plus, your job was always the one that paid the bills, so it was a no brainer… and I get to spend more time with my favorite person in the world!” He made a strange face at the baby and she laughed again. 

“I love you,” said Tess, leaning her head on his shoulder. 

He held her hand in his lap. “I love you too.”

The Oak loved them both, though he couldn’t say it in a way they would understand. But he was content to provide them shade as the summer sun grew hot that day, and he was content to watch them leave once their food was gone and their baby grew restless. They said nothing of their plans for the future - where this new job Tess was starting would take them, and more importantly, if they’d be back to lounge under his shade once more. Yet the Oak didn’t need an auditory confirmation. The man looked back at him as he was getting in his car, and he knew then that they’d be back next year. Or perhaps even sooner. He hoped even sooner. 

And then there was the child who used to sit in his branches all day. He remembered the young one would run up to him with a bag still on his shoulders, grab onto his lowest branch, and slowly hoist himself up into a nice, mellow crook in one of the Oak’s branches which was perfect for a small boy to lay in. The kid would reach into his bag, grab some piece of fruit and a book, and start reading, occasionally pushing the spectacles on the bridge of his nose. What the child read, the Oak didn’t know. Nor did he know from where the child came. There were a few days the child wouldn’t come, and many days he’d come with some new bruises on his face and a wobble in his step. Those were the days the Oak wished he could help the child by extending his branch down, hearing the kid’s sniffles as he slowly unzipped his bag and took out the fruit with no book. The Oak could guess what had happened to him - he didn’t need the boy’s tears to hit his roots to know. 

This went on for many years, until the child became a young man and couldn’t fit in that crook in the Oak’s branch anymore. But he still came. This time with a laptop rather than a book, and he sat under the Oak, sometimes right near where the young couple used to sit, and he’d click clack away on his keyboard, leaning his head back against the Oak’s thick bark. There were still bruises which would pop up on his little face every now and then, but there was a steely resolve in his eyes every time he opened his laptop and started typing. He wiped away tears almost impatiently, and the Oak was impressed by his new persona. 

Then he left. And the Oak did not see him for many years. For almost a decade, the great tree wondered where his child had gone. And then, on a frigid winter’s day, he saw the child again, now a fully grown man, in a somber black jacket. His hair looked neater than it ever had before, and when he put his hand on the Oak there was no tremble in the fingers. It took some time for the great Oak to notice the woman with him. 

“Y’know… I used to come here everyday after school,” he said softly, “I’d climb up… using this branch, right here,” he grasped the now larger branch firmly, “And I’d sit up there for hours, reading my books.”

“Aw, honey,” said the woman, who the Oak realized was much older than the man. 

“I never told you this, but… I used to get beat up in school. Sometimes it was over my lunch money… sometimes I-I felt like it was for no reason at all.” His voice cracked. 

“Jim-”

“And of course I didn’t wanna go home, ever… so I’d sit here until nightfall, as long as I could. Up there, no one could hurt me. I could be myself in peace, and quiet. And then, when I became too big to fit in that spot up there, I’d sit down here with my laptop and write.” He patted the ground with his foot, and traced a hand over the heart carved into the Oak’s bark. 

“Listen, Jim,” said the woman with a tremulous voice, “I know I wasn’t much of a mom to you back then… you deserved the world, and I… I couldn’t give it to you. I’m sorry, you know I am. I was going through a lot back then, and-”

“So was I,” interjected the man harshly. “All I needed was one decent parent… just one person who I could talk to, who I could go to with my… when they beat me. You didn’t even seem to notice when I’d come home hurt. When I was crying. When I was hungry because those bastards in school took my lunch money and I didn’t have anything to eat.”

“I did notice,” cried the woman, stepping forward, “But I was scared… your father, well… he wasn’t going to be a part of your life, I’d already decided that. And I didn’t know how to do things on my own. I couldn’t hold a job and take care of you at the same time - at least, that’s what I thought. That’s what… that’s what the pills told me.”

Jim laughed. “I guess that a mother’s love does have its limits after all.”

“Not anymore,” said the woman fiercely. “I’m gonna make up for all those years, Jim. I really am. You just need to give me the chance.”

“It’s pretty interesting that I sign my first publishing deal and you reappear in my life all of a sudden.” Jim started walking around the tree to conceal the tears flowing down his face. 

“I was in… the hospital, Jim… trying to get better, for you. For what I did to you.”

“Why… why do I need you anymore?” asked Jim with stunted words. 

“You don’t,” replied his mother sadly, “But I need you.”

Jim turned around and faced his mother, their faces both full of tears, their jagged breaths steaming the air in front of them. They stared at one another for some time, pale and red-eyed, until Jim ran up and crushed his mother in an embrace. “Oh, Mama,” he said through his sobs. 

“Jim!” She cried through her own. 

They stood like that for some time, rocking on the spot, and the Oak felt the release of decades of tension in the cold winter air. When they broke apart, they had identical watery smiles on their faces, and they left the park bumping shoulders. The Oak breathed a sigh of relief, expressed in a warm breeze which suddenly lifted the icy grip of winter for a tender moment. He felt a squirrel scurry up his trunk and sit down on one of his large branches, and he thought back to the man who had just returned to him last October alone, perhaps the last in his family. 

Yes, thought the Oak, Some things do change.