Have you ever received a plant as a gift, which you then planted,
and it's still growing years later?
A few days after my birthday, while rushing deadlines at work, I received a call from a doctor friend. I was curious, since this friend is Sophie's doctor, and would never call me at the office unless it was something very important.
"Hi Bessie! It's been a while. How are you?"
"Moon, you have to meet me. We need to talk."
My stomach starts to stiffen into knots. "Is it about Sophie? .... It's that important, huh? When? Right now? Why, are you in town?"
Bessie is visiting my city, and is whiling away the afternoon at a colleague's private clinic. She knows me real well. When she tells me something about Sophie, she knows I'll drop everything I'm doing, meet her, and listen. And that's exactly what I do.
At the clinic, Dr. Bessie meets me at the door. We greet and clasp hands tightly, not having seen each other for a long while, but I look closely at her face for any signs of trouble. There's none. In fact, she seems very cheerful, with a mysterious glimmer in her eyes.
I relax a bit, and tease her. "So. What is it about Sophie that made you pull me off my urgent deadlines? Where's the emergency nut case now? Why didn't she call me and send you instead?"
"You silly man. Here." She points to a big shopping bag, with a potted Araucaria pine proudly jutting out its strapling arms, as if to greet me.
"From Sophie?"
"Yes. There's a note inside. Happy birthday, my friend."
I read the short note. And I smile. Sophie remembered, after all. She knows my love affair with the Araucaria pine tree. She remembered...
My love for the Araucaria in the yard of my parents' old home -- the tallest living Christmas tree in the entire neighborhood, that produced resin for us kids to smell and shape and play with all year long.
My care for an Araucaria seedling that I planted in another place, which grew to a meter high before some damaged soul uprooted it in a fit of madness.
My need for the forest Araucarias that I hugged, rested and slept under, admired from a distance. The Araucarias that I wished were all growing in my front yard. Wherever that front yard happened to be.
Now Sophie is giving me, not just a birthday gift, but a lifetime memory.
I stand to go, bid Dr. Bessie goodbye, and thank her for going all the way to my city just to deliver Sophie's gift.
Bessie, Sophie and I come a long way. We are veterans of another kind of war that rages inside the mind. We are survivors of emotional holocausts. When the three of us meet, few words need be said. All the years telescope into those few moments, sometimes of utter terror, sometimes of inconsolable despair, at other times of pure joy.
In her note, Sophie asked me: "Please plant it on the date we first met. For you to always remember me."
Today is that day. And later this afternoon, after I return from work, I will plant it in one of my favorite spots, beside a rock ledge just below the ridge.
I will plant it, not just for Sophie. I will plant it, for all the damaged souls in the world. You are not hopeless. You are not beyond repair. You will grow.
Oh yes, you will acquire a lifetime of scars. You will bleed. All Araucarias do.
But you, individual trees, seemingly isolated and separate from each other are actually interconnected, for your entire lifetime, at the roots and at the canopy. You are that which makes this beautiful earth what it is.
I plant this tree for you here too, my friends at Soulcast. Souls that
go by the name of ImNotHungry, KillingMe4U, VacantMind, and countless others. To Netta, or Calyptic_August. Damaged and scarred by mindless abuse, but struggling to survive, to cope, to overcome. Survivors all, like the ancient Araucaria.
I plant this tree for all of us. I plant it with a deeply-held memory of love, from Sophie.
