neighbors
Branching
1) I came home on Tuesday to the sound of chainsaws in the yard behind me. The neighbor’s gardeners were chopping down all the pepper trees along our fence line! Sanctuaries for untold numbers of finches, mockingbirds, hummingbirds, plus other species I can’t yet identify. Shelter against the blazing heat of summer and the encroachment of suburbia. *weeps*
As I watched them hack away at the tree branches, I felt my own habitat being diminished. I panicked. I called my sister, crying. Then I sobbed on the phone to my husband. But at some point, I shook myself by the shoulders. If you don’t voice your concerns to the right person, I said to me, you have no right to complain. None whatsoever.
So! I grabbed an armful of refrigerated water bottles, slid into my flip-flops, and hurried over to the neighbor’s house. I begged, cajoled and pleaded…on behalf of the trees, the birds, and the environment (natural and man-made). And in the end, he relented. *good graces all around.* Sadly, the gardeners had already chopped back most branches to the trunk. But the homeowner agreed to leave it at that. And since pepper trees are hardy, prolific and fast-growing, the damage will (crossed fingers!) ultimately be undone.
Hope survives. It always does, in one form or another. This time, it takes the shape of a mockingbird, who this very morning is perched in the highest remaining limb of a pepper tree, singing its little heart out. Hope, the thing with feathers. When we look for it, we find it.
2) My story took yet another surprising turn, leading me to another mysterious branching of my family tree. I can’t say more than that right now, other than that I’m playing Nancy Drew today, and I’m (re)learning another life lesson in the process. To wit: We typically see what we want to see, discover what we expect to find. But as we learn to detach from expectations, we expand our vision…and that, I believe, adds new dimensions to our writing.
Mockingbird image credit: Duncraft