Structural Integrity

I don't know why I remember that tree we had in the front of the house. It was a sickly looking thing, never growing any larger than the height of the rusting brown banisters on the perimeter of the portico. But apparently, it had always been this way. My pregnant mother decided while she was having me that a tree would be a nice addition to our home's patchy lawn and eroding brick façade, something green to fill some the empty space we had between the sunburnt grass and the gray crumbling house. On an impromptu newborn-preparation trip to the local "Zellers", she had come across what my father would nostalgically describe as "a variety of twigs potted in soil dryer than the Sahara". Naturally, my mother practicing for her impending motherhood decided that a tree would naturally be the preparation she needed for a new child and picked up what she thought was the healthiest of the dismal looking bunch.

She bought the tree, thinking it would be a nice little shrub, a cute pop of green against the gray elevation of the portico. Her expectations were met for many years as the tree stubbornly stayed the same sized twig as the day she brought it home, never getting any bigger, just wider with its spines sprouting and spreading far and wide between the branches. It always looked thin, on the verge of death with its ailing boughs that hung down as the pines got longer, never fuller. But over the fifteen years we did have it, it grew taller and taller, reaching just over five feet tall before it stopped completely, never looking like a normal tree, but instead looking more and more scrubby the taller it got. But it became what identified our home. If we were giving directions, we would automatically allude to the scraggly tree in front of the house. It became a landmark to our family. It was both the most majestic and pathetic looking thing I had ever seen.

Before we had cut it down, my father decided to give it a trim, hoping that in the same way a hair looks after a snip at the barbers, the twigs would look fuller and healthier. In the same way my mother would get tweezer-happy with her eyebrows, my father snipped and snipped away at the tree, leaving the back of the tree completely bare to the trunk. He had come inside, sweating and sheepish as he told my mother that he had "cut an apron for the tree". My mother, baffled and confused, left her station at the stove to venture out to the veranda, gasping as she saw the bald behind of the tree, looking as sickly as ever, it's boughs sparse and few. I fell into a fit of uncontrollable giggles, looking at the nakedness of the trunk, the meagre and scanty pines spread out like fingers shielding the soft bark pathetically and unsuccessfully, something akin to the dismal Christmas tree that Snoopy and the gang had in that one special.  My father, proud of his handiwork, couldn't understand what was so funny. My mother stood aghast, her hand massaging her temples as she examined the tree. Bare to the bark, the tree stood nearly naked against the house, a laughing stock with our family and friends. We then became the house with the butchered tree in our group of friends.

The tree lasted another few years but never seemed to recuperate from the trauma of my father's trimming shears. It's behind remained stark naked until the day we paved over the lawn and dug out the garden - literally paving paradise to put up a parking lot. I remember the day my father dug the tree out, the roots were thick as my forearms spreading deeply into the soil. My father cracked a joke about the tree becoming an old woman - packing the pounds on under the belt after her prime. That poor tree was the butt of jokes even until the bitter end.