The Condition

I have a condition. Not one diagnosed, or eligible for prescriptions, but it’s there, and controlled by one single action. It was unavoidable in the beginning, being that my mother was burdened with a cruel deer tick that sucked more than blood from her. What followed her bite were shortened vacations, mustard powder foot baths (which scent has been ingrained into the memory of my nose), joint pains, fevers, essential oils (which smell is still embedded in every piece of furniture she sat in), infrared appointments, and not to mention the main culprit to the resentment I faced growing up: her PTSD. I was never to go outside barefoot (rain boots up to my knee were preferable), I was to check myself every time I came back in the house (an occasional hair check was followed after my initial sweep), and I was to shower right away when I was outside doing work. There was a single problem, though.

I lived outside.

Not literally, of course, but growing up, I liked to think I really did. My imagination aided me in that way by the means of “pretend.” All I needed was a whittled stick, an old bucket, the water hose, and access to my overgrown yard that flourished with Celandine, Mulberries, and Pokeweed. I concocted, in my opinion, gourmet meals of mashed berry and water blends that I “ate” (which meant I just poured the mixture into the ground while making chewing sounds). My yard became my home worthy enough to “cook” in, and scavenge, and explore. I journeyed into the woods and into the muddy creek next door, bucket in tow.

So of course I argued, and complained at the amount of extra precautions my mother put on me regarding ticks. The constant routines that felt so pointless and demeaning to the place I love. She was placing a flaw on something I refused to believe had anything relating to an imperfection.

Which was why I was utterly crushed when my mother told me she hired a landscaper. She told me it was time to trim the yard. She told me they were going to plow down the blackberry bushes, form the rock pile into a rock wall, and cut down some trees. She told me in the process, the grass we did have would be uprooted, and nothing but dirt would be left. She told me over grown yards are teeming with ticks, and this way, we would be more protected from getting the disease that already took her.

She took me out into the yard, and walked me around, pointing out where the changes were to be held. On our walk back, she pointed to a slanted tree that was to be cut down, and that is when I snapped. I froze in my place, looking down at the ground. Then I started to cry. Uncontrollable, stammering, and to my mother, astonishing.

I told her how upset it was that she was ruining my home. She was killing everything that made it beautiful. It felt like she was ripping a piece of me out and throwing it away.

“Honey, I had no idea you felt that way,” is what she said. Yet, I knew she still didn’t understand. Because she had not grown up hiding under the porch, or making mud pies, or crushing acorn shells and using the contents for soup. She had not climbed the slanted tree, or the willow, or the one with the perfect cranny to wedge your foot in to climb up. She had not breathed in the scent of bark, or dandelion fuzz, or leaf juice every single day like it was oxygen. She was clouded by the fears of a bug that was smaller than my fingernail.

My cry wasn’t enough to stop anything, except for the removal of a few large rocks I had grown attached to, and the removal of the entire slanted tree. The top branches and limbs were cut off, but the trunk remained, like a sad, standing carcass. It was a form of compromise that had become a ritual for us.

That was when the condition formed.

With every tree cut, I would cry. A few months later, a tree in the front that was blocking a telephone wire had to be removed, so I cried, and the workers ended up cutting half of it down. Several years later, the tree next to our back porch, that held one of our monkey swings, had an unlucky winter where a large branch fell, so it was deemed hazardous to our house, and was set to be cut. I cried, thus it was chopped so the trunk would remain. A graveyard of logs would rest in the yard for a few weeks and little reminders of the resentment I had would stay.

The resentment of Lyme Disease.

The resentment of telephone wires.

The resentment of fear of damaged roof.

The resentment of the safety that was everyone’s priority except mine.

The resentment of going into my yard, and seeing ghosts of earlier days, and wondering how those hours outside should have felt longer than it really does now.

There is an unspoken attachment I have with nature, and one I began to realize the day the landscapers came, that not everyone has. Not everyone sees a death when they see a fallen tree, or care to value when wind carries the smell of dirt and pine needles across their noses. Not everyone believes that their home with wooden frames is not the only home they have.

I may resent all the things that contradict the environment I grew up to love, but I will never regret the way I learned to love it, and how it has shaped me as a person. Nor will I ever regret crying for something I have lost, for if I don’t, it will lose its importance.