My big boy is gone for the summer, this time until August and although the Hawaiian trip delayed the pain of longing, upon my return to Colorado and his empty room, my heart aches. Since he was four years old, I have practiced "saying good bye" and though the pain is duller now and I no longer pace his room, tears streaming down my face with the fierce longing of motherhood, for weeks on end. I miss him. His tender hearted presence and gentle energy. His slow smile and deep thinking. He is growing up and sometimes it feels like a string of goodbyes within a continuous stream of love so large that all our tears have room to fall.
Yes, I know it doesn't look like much. It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall. The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep. But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy. I am a woman who loves the spring. I nearly live for it. When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis. I gorge. This year has been hard. Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally. The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
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