I. The Beech Tree

While the house I grew up in was being built, my mother would sometimes come and watch, making a cozy spot for me at the feet of a huge beech tree that stood in the backyard, at the edge of the woods in our new neighborhood, Marshallee. We moved into the house in August of 1968, when I was 10 months old. The tree still stands behind the house, but after more than 40 years of residency, my parents sold the house a few years ago. I haven’t been back to see it since, although I’m often in the area visiting friends, or my sister, or my daughter who now lives with her aunt during the school year.

There are many things about beech trees that set them apart from their fellows in the tree world. First would be their smooth, silvery bark, which scars easily and is therefore a beloved target of graffiti aficionados who were obviously never Girl Scouts who were taught that tree bark is the equivalent of our skin. Second would be their interesting, rounded-pyramid-shaped seeds, housed in prickly little nut shells. Squirrels sometimes nested in this tree, but always loved scrambling around in its branches, feasting on these tasty (I imagine) little nuts. The shells would fall gently onto the back porch, and sometimes our heads, in the autumn months. I wonder if the squirrels made bets with each other about whether they could make their scraps hit us when they fell. The third, and most interesting, unique feature about this breed of tree is the way that its trunk seems to grow human faces. Knobs and whorls, which appear on the smooth trunk as it grows, resemble eyes and eyebrows, sometimes even a lumpy nose or a scowling frown. A single tree can glower down upon the forest from 6 or 10 different vantage points on its trunk. Because of these faces, beech trees have always seemed to me more likely to be inhabited by a spirit or soul than the average tree.

This exact tree, both in fact and in fancy, watched me grow from a baby into an adult…watched my sisters grow, and my family evolve. I miss it almost in the way I would miss a relative.

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