Limb by Limb
Near the garage, Bryan gives Sam a chainsaw lesson against my wishes. He yanks the cord with a few quick jerks. The tired saw sputters with each pull, not yet ready to commit to the task. Leaning forward to see the commotion, Kate emerges from the leaves. The stammering of the chainsaw continues. She looks at me with hopeful eyes, and I can read her mind: Maybe that old chainsaw won’t start up. As quickly as she’s grown, her eyes have never changed. If I focus on the lashes shading her cheek and the amber flecks of light that slice through her dark orbs like cut glass, I can imagine that she’s three years old. For a breath, she fits once more in my arms and all her worries can be kissed away.
There was a time when Bryan had the same ability, the power to ease my mind with nothing more than his love. I contemplate his muscled physique now as he tries to conquer the machine. With his strong hands and arms, he makes middle age look like something to aspire to. Pulling at the hem of his T-shirt, he wipes sweat from his temple before grabbing the cord and flexing again. Sam secures his footing and balances his stance to mimic his father’s. I can’t make out what Bryan is saying, only the gentle cadence of his words. Envy bears down on my heart as the memory of last night’s argument sinks into my chest. I prop myself up like Mrs. Jenkins and her sunflowers.
I’ve always been struck by the physical ache one can feel in the heart, how emotions can make you aware of the actual muscle mass in your chest, the weight of it adjusting depending on the kind of emotion. The thought of Bryan’s cold look of disapproval extinguishes the rush of attraction as quickly as it came, and I am left with the same heavy heart that kept me from falling asleep last night, when our bed felt emptier with him in it.
The chainsaw lets out another grumble before finally taking off with a high-pitched buzz. Bryan takes Sam over to a pile of practice logs and shows him how to sever limbs. Hopefully not his own. From up in her loft of foliage, Kate lets out a whimper.
“Birdie, try to understand.”
Her eyes glaze over. “You’re all killers of nature,” she says. She makes her accusation with an ironic tone of acceptance that I recognize as my own. It’s hard to blame your children when they grow from the very seeds you planted.
A few years ago, Kate made the same accusation, but with the sweeter insistence of a little girl. Bryan was spraying the dandelions that had popped up in cheerful victory all over the front yard. One by one, he pumped poison onto the citrine blooms. Kate stopped twirling in her favorite blue dress and began to cry, begging him to stop. Since the Dandelion Dispute of 2008, one of Kate’s chores has been to pull the flowers out of the ground by hand and make bud vases for the windowsills and bathroom counters. I let them linger in their tiny vases until they droop and dry. When I wash dishes where the flowers line the sill, I consider how Birdie’s care has transformed them from weeds into wonders. I think of how much like children they are. Persistent. At risk. Beautiful in the eyes of the right beholder. Carried away by the breeze, free to explore if you let them take their natural course.
The tree has grown quiet and still. A gentle wind passes through, grazing the branches. Kate fiddles with a leaf, pressing it onto her palm and measuring the size of her hand from stem to tip. As she compares the leaf’s veins to her own, she flashes before me again as a smaller girl. She used to perform similar examinations of her dandelions, gently separating the small, silky petals, one by one, and losing count before reaching a final tally. One year, we had enough blooms from her harvest to make a batch of dandelion jam. She ate it by the spoonful. I wish I could preserve this tree for her, distill it and add just the right amount of sweetener. Capture it in a jar so she can taste her childhood, take it like communion and savor it. Let it become a part of her, eternally.
“You should have seen these trees fifteen years ago, Birdie.”
Hallelujah, I remember thinking as we drove down the gravel driveway, escorted the entire way by trees. We had finally found a home we could afford, one we could grow into. The adolescent boughs reached up as if to welcome us and share in our praise. They promised a canopy. The best was yet to come.