This place is all that I have and all that I know. It’s a place of nature and healing. All you have to do is look out over the tall grass and breathe in the air. Your head fills with cracked wheat, wildflowers, and thick, rich soil. Bring it into your lungs, let it linger, and then let it out, and whatever that’s been troubling you just evaporates like winter breath.
In the heat of the summer lightning bugs paint a bright blanket of undulating light as far as you can see, and bright enough you don’t need a flashlight. Looking out over them, each individual flash melts into another to become an impressionist rendition of the landscape. Dark splotches replace the only two trees around, and a painter’s knife cuts a blue-black creek through the yellow light. The light is almost a solid sheet, but sometimes a hole shows up. A mean looking hole, moving around from place to place.
My grammy taught me everything there is to know about the magic of the trees. They’d been here longer than my family, and their secrets had been passed down through the generations. You can see both of them stretching tall in the long grasses when you’re looking down the hill from the back of the house. The tree furthest from the house was the tree of the refreshing spring. Spring as in water. Apparently you can leave something at the tree and get refreshing water in return, but folks don’t use it now that we all have plumbing. The other tree is just past the garden, and it still sees regular use.
We call it the tree of remembrance. You can take your gratitudes to it and bury them under the shade of the tree, and they grow into the sweetest memory, but they are honest memories. You remember all the details and how things came to be. It can be a little bittersweet, but it’s the honesty that bears the fruit of gratitude. We have a tendency to overlook the hard parts of things when we have a good memory. That’s nostalgia. You wipe away the bad and only see the good. The tree of remembrance gives it all.
The first piece of gratefulness I buried beneath the tree was my grammy telling me the secrets of the trees. I remember every detail about being six years old, sitting on an old lady’s lap, smelling her hair. I remember her voice, the gravel in it, and the way everything she said sounded like a song regardless. I remember the kindness in her eyes and the joy of hope and love as she told me about how the tree of remembrance helps you build a better life. I remember how the lines in my face grew to match hers.
I also remember how my family came to acquire this land, generations ago, on the heels of the army. Sometimes it’s hard to acknowledge that the things we love came to us in unpleasant ways, but that’s why the tree of remembrance is so good. Gratitude is the fruit of honesty, and it often comes with a desire to heal old wounds to wash out the bitter and leave the sweet.
So we bring what we are thankful for here, give thanks for what we truly love, and remember those things in all of their naked honesty. Then we can use that knowledge to make better choices and build better gratitudes. I hope that someday, someone will bring a gratitude to the tree of remembrance and the bitter will be washed out.
That’s the memory I was savoring when I saw a hole open in the undulating field of pale yellow light. A mean looking hole, like a tear. The lighting bugs moved fast at the edge of the tear. Their flashes would cut short and move in whatever direction was away from the blackness they surrounded, making it look even angrier than the cruel darkness at the center.
It was unsettling. I’d seen it before on and off throughout my life. The first time was while mom, dad, and grammy were still here. It looked a lot meaner when it was just me. I watched the hole rip through the field, a shadow moving through the light, maybe twenty feet to the left, then stop. It just sat there for a bit before I could feel its eyes turn on me. Then it came at me fast.
My breath caught and my eyes opened wide as adrenaline flooded me, preparing my body for the worst. Until, just as sudden as it appeared, the rip in the light gently closed up, and all that was left was the same blanket of light I’d seen so many times before. I turned and went inside.
I spent the next day mending the garden fence. The soil here produced the best food you’ve ever had, I promise, and the rabbits knew that too. Tenacious little critters. Mending the fence was a weekly occurrence in the summers here.
I’d never had a real job. We had always kept our needs simple, and the garden provided. There would always be enough to keep us fed and a little more to bring to market. Everyone knew our garden, and people lined up to get a taste. We asked a fair price, which was sometimes more than the grocery store and sometimes less, and we always sold out. It was enough to meet our meager needs, and never a penny more.
What more could we need? We had the best garden, the most beautiful landscape, and not one but two magic trees. This place provided in abundance. There was space for swimming in the summer, space for sledding in the winter, food for our bellies, and a family full of love and gratitude. We didn’t even get refrigeration until I was in my forties. We just never saw a need for such extravagances.
I’ve always loved it here, and I knew it would pass on to me, so I dropped out of school as soon as I was able. I just didn’t see the point. I figured someday I’d find someone to share this place with, have a child of my own, and just keep things going like my parents did and theirs before them.
“That’s a bittersweet gratitude,” I say to myself as I look out over the blanket of lightning bugs, aware of my solitude. I took in a deep breath, my head filled with cracked wheat and the ruddy smell of lightning bugs in heat. My lungs remembered the soil that sustains them. I exhale slowly, and allow myself to get lost in the beauty of the evening.
Until a hole ripped itself into the center of the blanket of light. I eyed it with unease. It moved left, then right, aimlessly searching through the tall grass. My old legs stretched beneath me, shaking loose the muscles, just in case.
The tear stopped. It found me, looking down on it from my perch in the garden, and it came at me like a flame up a fuse. Lightning bugs darted away all around it, faster in front of it as it picked up speed. I turned and ran.
It was fast, but I was close to the house. I pushed my legs out into the ground as hard as I could coax them to, pushing the garden behind me, and bring the safety of a sturdy house close. I got to the rear glass door that overlooked the garden faster than I had since I was a child. I got in and slid the door shut, turning and falling across the room, raising my arms to protect me from the glass if that thing decided to keep on coming.
The hole in the light came right up to the door and washed across it, a wave of invisible cruelty breaking against the glass, then filling in with the flash of lightning bugs again. I stood up slowly, creeping towards the glass. It was gone. Whatever it was followed me up to the door and just disappeared. I stood up straight and walked up to the glass door, looking out over the blanket of light, looking for whatever it was and seeing no trace of it.
I felt the tension leaving my body, as muscles and nerves turned their sensitivity down. I looked down at the ground in front of the door, checking for tracks or other marks it may have left behind. What I found instead were feet.
They were the color of shadow, and I could see the dirt beneath them. My head snapped up, looking for the thing at my doorway. A crooked smile cracked its way across the glass, showing jagged teeth. Bright yellow eyes lit up in the darkness, illuminating and revealing an expression of hateful glee.
Once again, I am fueled by adrenaline and running. I reach the back room as I hear the glass shatter, and the wind chime jingle of its feet walking across the broken pieces. Quick as I could I open the window.
I’ve made these moves for as long as I can remember. Twice a year we would have a fire drill. Grammy would press the test button on the smoke alarm to set it off, and then wait outside, timing us. Best to be prepared.
Decades of practice drove the movements of my hands as I unlatched the window, opened it, and pushed the screen out, in a single fluid motion. I latched my hands on the sill and pushed the top half of my body out, noticing the age spots on my hands as I pass over them. I settle myself to the ground, then stand and run, out into the tall grass. I hear the thing claw through my door as my feet press the ground.
I notice wetness on my face, first thinking it’s mist collecting, then tasting the salt. I’m crying. I’m screaming. I look behind me and see the tear in the light as the shadow moves through the field, hot on my heals.
My foot catches on a patch of tangled grass, and I tumble, hitting my back hard against something. Bark digs into me. I look up towards the house and see the tree of remembrance, silhouetted by the house lights. I’m at the tree of the refreshing spring.
The rip in the light comes to me and stops, feet away. The creature has me. A shattered glass smile spreads across its face and it laughs the cruelest laugh. I am trapped between it and this tree.
I summon all of my remaining courage and spring up to it, lashing out with all of my strength, screaming at it with every cell in my body. My hands sink into something, a warm thickness. A shadow made flesh. I catch onto it, grabbing tight and pulling.
It laughs. It spreads its arms, wrapping me up, and opens its mouth wider than possible. Shattered glass teeth grow out of the darkness and it slams me down against the tree. I feel the pinch and puncture as it sinks into my shoulder and the warm liquid that flows from it. I scream.
Coldness washes over my hair. A cool liquid. Water. The tree of the refreshing spring has come alive and is pouring cool water over me, washing the blood from my shoulder, where the thing gnaws away. It swings its teeth back and fourth, trying to saw a piece out of me, but the water is refreshing.
I grab it with my newfound strength, noticing my spot free hands as they grasp the toothy head. I push it back, placing my feet against the tree behind me, The creature sinks claws into my ribs and I howl, not just with pain, but with anger and determination. This time, I catch hold and get the better of the creature. I pin him to the ground and dig into its body with my fists, grabbing only dirt.
The creature writhes beneath me, gnashing glass teeth and raking glass claws. I keep at it, pounding dirt with my fists, digging through it. The creature throws its head back and howls, bursting into black mist and evaporating. I am left, alone, with my hands fumbling in the dirt. They find a small box.
I dig out the box, placed there by my hands years ago. I bring it to the tree of remembrance and dig a small hole. I place the box in the hole, covering it with the rich, black soil that has sustained me all these years, and I remember.
Memory is a funny thing. When I am gone, I hope the waters from the tree will wash away some of the bitterness that grew here, and that this place will find a good return. This is the only life I could have led, and I am thankful for it.
I remember how I acquired the scars that match my grammy’s, and the meanness that put them there. I remember leaving school to feed my family, and the dreams I had before. I remember that my family loved me, but that they were complicated and troubled. I remember choosing solitude, and I am thankful to see the end of a long line. Finally, I remember the full name of the tree of forgetting and refreshing waters.