Tree-huggers
kidding: the power of one’s mind
Monday: Tell me about a “wow” or “oh yeah” moment in your life. When you came to a realization and something made complete sense. What happened? Where were you? What did you realize/learn?
I may have been around eleven. You have to picture a kid raised by books. No exaggeration in that whatsoever. My parents may not have been present, loving, or kind, but my mom was already into her book-hoarding habit and, with her friend a librarian at the municipal library, I had library cards in both my parents’ names. I devoured books like a gluttonous Gargantua, not with much discernment or guidance.
The municipality had planted a walnut tree in front of each apartment building, in an effort to, I don’t know what — I didn’t understand much of the reasons the regime had for anything back then. Well, one day I saw someone come with a ladder and a saw, climbing the walnut tree across our building.
We, the kids, loved those trees: not only did they give us walnuts in autumn, but we could climb them, hide in them, throw rocks at each other from up above, break our skulls, and so on. They were indispensable to our growing up.
I saw the guy climbing the ladder and I thought he will fall. Each step he took was followed by my same thought: he will fall. To my dismay he made it up high. Yet, I chased that thought and replaced it with the falling one. He positioned himself well into the trunk, pulled up the saw and started cutting, each movement of his arm followed by my thought that he will fall.
My gaze followed him down, my thought changing into he is falling. To his luck, he remained suspended in-between some branches, saw dangling still in his right hand, up until the firemen and ambulance came. I had never intended to kill or injure him, and so he was unharmed. That dangling saw is still in my mind like a prop without stage directions. The man was my puppet, my mind unstoppable.
No one else came to cut the tree in my remaining years there. I was not surprised. In fact, I’d caress or hug it and reassure it with every chance I got.
Half a year ago, after having lived for three decades in a bunch of world capitals and famous cities, I moved to British Columbia, Canada. I laughed out loud, snorting, when I was told that the people from the neighboring province shun British Columbians for being tree-huggers. I am where I am supposed to be.
Copyright © 2020 by Georgiana Petec. All rights reserved.
Thank you so much for reading. Happy Holidays with peace, joyful moments and mountains of love! 🙏🎊🎍
My gratitude goes towards 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊 😊
