© Can Stock Photo / suti

1996

Janet Graber
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

You are working at the sink on a tiny tree and a moss rounded bowl. Slow wiring of branch to trunk. Snips of bark with scissors you can close your hand around. Week after week. Slowly and deliberately you remove leaves smaller than tears. You must discard all that interferes with your vision of perfection. No matter how lovely the arc of the branch, if it flares off in the wrong direction it must go. It simply must. No cause for sentimentality. It’s not like that. You are not interested in the branch. You are after the whole tree.

I sit on my bed engaged in bonsai of my own. Day after day I think that if I can train the direction with wire and tiny snips, I can shape and control my heart. I am so tired of all the crying. I am exhausted with the effort of going every day to work and knowing you are not in your office downstairs, knowing that I won’t see your car rounding a corner, knowing that you won’t call me because you’ve decided you have to get on with your life where you are. You are lying in the bed you’ve made, why can’t I accept that, you ask in our last real conversation.

I am trying to accept. And I am trying to change what I cannot accept. So I am binding the wire tighter. I get confused when I try to translate the instructions, though. Am I training my heart to not miss what it can no longer feel or to no longer feel what it misses?

I drink wine every night. A lot of it. It has taken me five months to realize that I am not like the other people I know whom I might say have a drinking problem. They drink in order not to feel. I drink in order to feel. The wires of my heart loosen only when lubricated. I cannot decide whether this aids in the healing or hinders it.

It takes seven years of my life to decide that it is safe to let the tree grow wild, expose it to the elements and prove its hardiness. It has expanded beyond the limits placed on it and I’m finally grateful.

You continue to prune and shape and you are rewarded with a minuscule tree that only ever stays in its bowl. No accidents of nature or unexpected events touch it. Only you touch it, with care and precision and the tiny scissors in your hand.

Janet Graber
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade