We have had several trees removed. Two were on the cusp of death, and six more were planted so closely to the house they were causing damage. Having removed them we must now replace them. We went to a commercial nursery recommended by the arborist. Here we chose Dragon Lady Hollies, and a single Autumn Blaze Maple. We then went to a more retail nursery to check stock and prices. The nursery had a stone fountain burbling in the open walkway of the facility, just in front of where we parked, and I was suddenly, painfully, elsewhere.
In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn comes to the hill of Cerin Amroth with Frodo, and then-
"...as Frodo looked at him he knew he beheld things as they once had been....For the grim years were removed from (his face)...and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.
'Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth, and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!'
....(and so saying) he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man."
When I saw that stone fountain, I was abruptly and completely elsewhere, at Albrecht's Nursery, in Narberth, PA, and it is 1968. We drove there to get a hose. My father is saying, in his deep, rumbling voice (so identical to mine now!) "we need a new hose". I have never been in Albrecht's. We park in front of the building, which has a vaguely art deco/Moorish temple appearance, and walk in. I have never been in a plant store, and it seems too small to be selling plants (where are they all?), and anyway the space is filled with a checkout counter and a great deal of things that have nothing to do with a yard as I know it- pots, tools, bags of soil, bags of fertilizer and seed.
The place smells incredibly wonderful- a slightly acrid, musty smell, a mix of earth and fertilizer and weed killer and I, a born huffer, love the chemical edge to the smell. It is very different from the hospital smells mixed with cigarettes that fill our home. I wander in the building, then out the back door to see where the plants are. They are in rows, little plants growing, some in the earth, some in pots, others in sheds. I see my parents picking a hose (the store has LOTS of hoses), and then something else- a spray nozzle. It is astonishing, a contraption made of bronze and steel, with a trigger handle, a screw attachment for the hose, and a little screw adjustment at the back. My father explains to me how it works, and I'm fascinated.
When we get home we throw out the old hose, which has a leak, and hook up the new one, and I put on the spray nozzle. We turn on the water, and my father shows me how to work the nozzle. I spend 15 minutes or so seeing what happens when you change the screw setting, learning how to use the device.
And that is my day at Albrecht's in 1968.
When I saw that stone fountain my gut immediately wrenched, and I decathected from my surroundings, profoundly upset. I couldn't walk into the store and smell the fertilizer and dirt- it would have been more than I could stand, and I couldn't say why. I told my wife to go in and do what she needed to do, and I sat in the car, awash in memory, drowning in emotions I couldn't quite understand right away.
In our home growing up there were one of things. One extension cord, referred to not as 'an' extension cord but 'the' extension cord. There was one sponge for the kitchen, one Tuffy for scrubbing. One hose. I recall how upset I was when my wife replaced our kitchen sponge in 1988. I felt we were being horribly wasteful. We had only been married 6 months, and were replacing a sponge, a lifetime purchase. Of course I learned better about sponges, but I still feel that way about hoses. We now have three or four hoses, which seems profligate to me, and about a dozen extension cords. One hose, one sponge, one extension cord, a mantra almost as stern and binding as One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.
I love trees. I know they die, but even in death they are beautiful, white skeletons across the sky on which other living things dwell, or logs covered with moss. But in subdivisions they are decorative, and their life cycle, especially their death, is not welcome. It is a threat to home, car, even people. And so I, a tree-lover akin to a Druid, had to cut down perfectly gorgeous trees just because they were the wrong distance from the house, which is itself the interloper in the landscape. And I am at a nursery to replace them.
How do you replace trees? It's even harder than replacing a hose, infinitely harder than replacing a sponge.
But why Albrecht's?
1968 was the last year of childhood latency for me. I was 11. The next year I would begin to see the drivers of the adult world, but at Albrecht's I was still in what Walter Lord called 'the last instant of peace'. I did not understand the behaviors, let alone the motives, of my parents. And unlike so many days that were full of anger, yelling, hitting, dialysis, medical care, vomit, blood, and sundry other disorders, that day at Albrecht's was wonderful. I wandered without chastisement, my curiosity was fulfilled without limitation. And my father showed me how to use a spray head, a moment of calm, kind, father-son interaction.
My parents were not good about taking care of yard things. My father was too sick; my mother didn't care. The spray head was left attached to the hose, which in turn was left in the grass, to rust and finally be run over by the lawn mower. I tried to remove the spray head, but it was rusted to the hose. I finally got it off to attach it to a new hose, but the screw was rusted in the closed position, the nozzle shut forever. I threw it away. It was 1978. Like sponges, I didn't know spray heads had to be replaced, or cared for.
And today, 54 years after 1968, I was for a few minutes again 11 years old, and all the experience of Albrecht's washed over me. I could indulge my curiosity without criticism from employers, patients, or society. I could express wonder without sneering. And I could remember a father-son moment all the more powerful in its rarity. It is that rarity that makes the memory so powerful, and it throws into stark contrast the ugliness of so much else. For a few minutes, like Aragorn, I was in a place and time that I could never see again except in memory, and would never visit again. Albrecht's was closed in 2006, the Moorish building torn down.
Since that day I've learned that sponges get replaced, and I don't get angry about it. I've learned about anger, conflict, desire, disappointment, jealousy. And today I learned that even trees are disposable and replaceable, and that the only thing that is permanent, seared into our souls, is memory.
Ted
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