1. “Tree Hugger”
By Sienna Mae Heath
Fall 2007
I watched bull-dozers destroy my childhood the morning before my eighteenth
birthday. I still regret not running outside and hugging those trees, as my yard was turned
into a construction site. Instead, I stood at the window in disbelief.
We see it every day - trees torn down to build a house - tractors eating the
branches of the left-over stumps. I never completely understood the tree hugger’s despair
until my own trees, the trees I had climbed as a scrawny little kid, were gone. Those trees
had held my memories since I ran into their arms at the age of three. And they were cut to
shreds in less than an hour.
I blew out eighteen candles while the destruction roared outside our kitchen
window. My parents and I decided to get away and treat ourselves to a shopping spree. It
was October of 2007, the month of all our birthdays. They bought me the laptop on which
I am typing this memoir, and we returned to our home a few hours later and found its
greenness grey. The grass was dirt. The trees were stumps. My tattered yellow swing was
lying on our porch. The raspberry bushes had been eaten by the machines.
Today, where the towering twin oak trees stood in the center of our side yard is
our neighbor’s living room and kitchen. Where my rubber yellow swing swung from one
of their branches is a paved driveway, used as a parking lot and basketball court for two
gangling high school boys. We got lucky; we have some lovely neighbors on a street
filled with some not-so-lovely, rowdy, and narrow-minded residents, but our lovely
neighbors will never know what their existence replaced in our eyes.
Our side yard once had green grass, brown and green oak trees, luscious red and
green raspberry bushes, poisonous shiny red berries, and fuzzy red sumac trees. The two
largest oak trees in the middle faced toward our half-a-double house. To the right of the
other big oak tree was a set of slate steps. Living in the Slate Belt of the Pennsylvania, we
were never short of slate. As a child, I skipped up and down those steps, dancing around
the twin oak trees, teasing the chipmunk who dug his home underneath the top step.
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2. Behind the biggest oak trees sat a bench and a table, which served as a seating
area for our many guests. In the front of the yard, to the right of the pillared oak trees
were raspberry bushes, which my mother gladly shared with the neighborhood children.
An arbor of three skinnier, but equally tall oak trees wrapped around the outside of the
yard, harboring us from the hectic traffic from the high school up the street. And in the
back was a tree of fuzzy red sumac, surrounded by daisies and daffodils in the
springtime, and draped with snow in the wintertime. Once my neighbor discovered that
we put the sumac in our salads, she was convinced that we were a family of witches.
The yard was picturesque, covered in diversely colored autumn leaves. We
always loved sitting outside in October, celebrating our birthdays and Halloween with
our closest friends and family. So seeing the trees fall amidst the autumn leaves on the
cool ground was a tough image to face on my last morning as a kid.
On my third Halloween, I dressed up in a glittering turquoise Persian costume,
assumed to be a genie costume, and danced in the leaves. I smiled at and giggled with my
mother, who was dancing with her camera at hand - always with her camera - and my
father waving with love in the kitchen window. The green grass and moss felt a little
damp beneath my feet, but the dampness was blanketed with the crisp leaves crunching
beneath the soles of my mother’s and my shoes as we twirled around in circles. Where
we danced is where my neighbors eat their holiday dinners.
My father painted with watercolors outside in the summer of 1998. We sat in the
yard, underneath the arbor of the large oak tree on the left. I swung from my swing,
facing him and his flowing wet paintbrush, as my mother sat on the dark green bench and
read a book. All our summers preserved that simple happiness for as long as I can
remember. “We are a family of artists,” my mother repeated underneath the shining sun
through the green leaves of the trees. We talked about art and laughed, knowing that we
were not the richest with money, but the richest with love for each other and love for our
arts. My father showed me how to mix the watercolors without turning a painting into a
dripping pile of brown mess. I sat in his lap and painted on a little strip of paper that I
later declared a bookmark. Where we sat is where our neighbors watch TV when they
wind down after a long day.
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3. On many nights, school nights and week-nights, I caught my mother awake and
swinging on the swing. She caught me up at late hours doing the same thing. We would
close our eyes and feel the branch waver as we swung higher and higher. After keeping
our eyes wide shut, we would open them with a renewed sense of wonder, looking up at
the moon and the stars and at each other in a new light. We talked about this and many
other things until one of us decided it was time for bed. We talked about the promise of
tomorrow and the glimmer of the past. In the summertime we wore shorts and T-shirts
and in the wintertime we wore hats and scarves. Still, we would swing and talk until the
weights on our eyes gave in to the night. Where we swung is where our neighbors park
their cars shortly after the sun sets.
Living in one of the many half doubles on our street, my mother always used to
say how lucky we were to have a big side yard. It gave us privacy. A home away from
home.
But we are renters. We rent our half-a-double house, and rented the side yard with
it until we switched landlords. Our old landlord refused to sell the yard to our new
landlords, as he was hoping to make a bigger chunk of cash from it. And so he did.
Apparently trees cut down to build a house are worth more than a green yard full of
memories.
Since Columbus Day is right around my mother’s and my birthday in October, the
holiday always gave us a three-day-weekend to celebrate together. She insisted on
educating me not only on Christopher Columbus, but on the other side of the story, the
Native Americans. Where she taught me is where she teaches me today - our living room.
I remember learning at a very young age how the Native Americans value the land’s
sacredness. When the Europeans burst into their ways of life, they perplexed the Native
societies with their concept of the buying and selling of land. The Native Americans had
never “sold” land because land and the nature upon it were regarded as home. Even if
they built on the land, they did so with respect and did not treat Mother Nature like
something with monetary value. Instead she was treated with respect, and they did not
compromise her dignity by bringing in gold coins or machines to eat her branches and
bushes.
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4. I finally understood what my mother was trying to teach me when I wanted to eat
chocolate cake and celebrate with my friends like a normal kid. I finally understood when
I saw my little piece of Mother Nature disrespected as I blew out eighteen candles from a
“normal” rectangular chocolate birthday cake. I returned to my dorm room as a legal
adult that night, feeling stripped of my childhood. While the memories in our green side-
yard will never fade into darkness, the barks of the trees sure did, and it was enough to
make me feel sad, but also angry that my family lost that greenness to the greedy hands
of our old landlord.
Like many other children, I attended many of my conditional friends’ birthday
parties. Quite a few of those parties were at houses larger than ours, and their parents
owned their houses. At a very young age, we recognize the differences between our
households, the houses we live in and the arms that hold us when we wake up from a
nightmare. My parents rented a house, while most of my friends’ parents were able to
own a house. Other households had clean cut lawns that have not changed as my friends
moved on to high school and college. It was hard to attend those birthday parties and
swim in those in-ground pools. I was embarrassed. But now I realize that even after
losing my little piece of Mother Nature, I have just as much as they ever did because I
have support from my old oak trees, my mother and father.
My parents and I, as renters of our house on our current landlord’s land, do not
rent the memories in that house - they are not for sale. The memories in our old side yard
were never for sale, so they do not fade with the destruction of last October. They stay
vivid in my family’s mind and vivid on this paper, which, undeniably, was made as a
result of another tree demolishing.
Driving the winding roads of the Lehigh Valley from home to school and then
back again, I readily see more trees being torn down outside my car window. It makes me
wonder what animals made their home in that wilderness before humans decided to build
their home in the home of Mother Nature. I wonder what we should all wonder when we
see machines eating the branches of trees, the berries of bushes, the innocent flowers
whose faces are squashed underneath the violent roaring of a yellow bull-dozer. Maybe a
couple of green and reckless teenagers shared their first kiss underneath the branches of
those trees. Or maybe it was only the boy’s first kiss and not the girl’s. And in six
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5. months, their make-out spot will be a toddler’s first room to himself, with a big-boy bed
covered with his favorite cartoon. Maybe his dresser will be made of real oak wood from
the yard of someone else’s childhood. But we don’t really think of this when we drive or
walk by a construction site. We shrug and maybe hope that the house looks nice and fits
in with the rest of the neighborhood.
I’ll always remember the two pillared oak trees in the center of our old yard. They
were old when they caught me in their arms, and they were old when their arms were
chopped off at the end of their lives. Looking through our family photo albums, our side
yard is the backdrop for the first eighteen years of my life. Behind preschool, birthday
parties, concerts, high school, get-togethers with family friends, prom, and graduation
stood two strong trees, my parents. Those tall oak trees may be gone now, but no bull-
dozer can ever take my parents away from me. Their undying love and support will stay
with me long after they are stumps in the ground. I’m grateful for the old trees in my life.
So every time I hug one of my parents or aunts and uncles, I realize that we are all tree
huggers even if we never leave our houses. On my last day as a kid, the greenness in my
life was stripped away. And I didn’t even run outside to dance amidst the leaves, or swing
from my mother’s branches, or hug the trees one last time. Instead, I stayed inside and
hugged my parents. As I became a legal adult, I became a tree hugger. And now I
understand the activists who lie on the ground or cling to the tree’s trunks as they prepare
to fall to their impending death, sometimes both the tree’s and the tree hugger’s death.
Tree huggers live and die for the oxygen in their lungs from the trees that keep them alive
in the first place. They live for the moments underneath the green arbor in our lives. We
live to first and foremost embrace one another, and so I have learned to live for the
greenness and the life it brings. And I embrace it; I hug it whenever it comes my way. If
that makes me a tree hugger, then I am proud to be one.
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6. months, their make-out spot will be a toddler’s first room to himself, with a big-boy bed
covered with his favorite cartoon. Maybe his dresser will be made of real oak wood from
the yard of someone else’s childhood. But we don’t really think of this when we drive or
walk by a construction site. We shrug and maybe hope that the house looks nice and fits
in with the rest of the neighborhood.
I’ll always remember the two pillared oak trees in the center of our old yard. They
were old when they caught me in their arms, and they were old when their arms were
chopped off at the end of their lives. Looking through our family photo albums, our side
yard is the backdrop for the first eighteen years of my life. Behind preschool, birthday
parties, concerts, high school, get-togethers with family friends, prom, and graduation
stood two strong trees, my parents. Those tall oak trees may be gone now, but no bull-
dozer can ever take my parents away from me. Their undying love and support will stay
with me long after they are stumps in the ground. I’m grateful for the old trees in my life.
So every time I hug one of my parents or aunts and uncles, I realize that we are all tree
huggers even if we never leave our houses. On my last day as a kid, the greenness in my
life was stripped away. And I didn’t even run outside to dance amidst the leaves, or swing
from my mother’s branches, or hug the trees one last time. Instead, I stayed inside and
hugged my parents. As I became a legal adult, I became a tree hugger. And now I
understand the activists who lie on the ground or cling to the tree’s trunks as they prepare
to fall to their impending death, sometimes both the tree’s and the tree hugger’s death.
Tree huggers live and die for the oxygen in their lungs from the trees that keep them alive
in the first place. They live for the moments underneath the green arbor in our lives. We
live to first and foremost embrace one another, and so I have learned to live for the
greenness and the life it brings. And I embrace it; I hug it whenever it comes my way. If
that makes me a tree hugger, then I am proud to be one.
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