By Catherine DiMercurio

Sometimes we are unsolved selves.

I walk a lot in my new neighborhood and have been watching the leaves begin to change, and I have been talking to trees.

Several streets here are lined with sycamores, and they often stand in some proximity to birches, silver maples, and the like. It would be easy, at this time of year, to take greater notice of the fiercely crimson and orange maples, or the cheerful yellow hues of the birch leaves. But, a mature sycamore is casually elegant. There is some kind of exuded wisdom you get a whiff of, along with a heady scent that reminds me of honey and hops. The bark of the trunk peels off in strips or patches, leaving behind swaths of varying shades, a silver-grey-green-brown palette that is beautiful, and charming, and comforting. The branches perform unique twists and turns, and the bark on these smaller limbs has an almost swirled coloration, again the silvery greys and browns along with a breath of green. The fallen leaves are yellow or brown, and have their own kind of vibrancy, green and amber heartbeat.

We are learning a lot about each other, these sycamores and I. Fallen branches provide new opportunities to understand the mysteries of how they grow, what they look like up close, up there.

You are strong and mysterious, I say to the sycamore out front, whom I call Henry, for now. I imagine he has observed my own somewhat strange behavior, the jumbled and overwrought moods I sometimes leave the house in when I walk the dog. The calm that often leads me home. Perhaps he thinks I’m strange, too, perhaps he worries about how much I worry. He says, maybe, why do you not see how strong you are?  

Today as I get ready for my walk, I decide I will leave my hair unbrushed and wild from sleep, so that I can be more like Henry. I look out the window at him and he tells me that’s not what makes you wild. Sometimes I imagine I’m part witch and that my friendship with Henry is a real and normal thing, and that my humanized translation of our conversation is an ability my coven was known for long ago and part of it still lives in me. And I tell myself I’m crazy and that I should write a short story about it instead of this little essay, which might make people worry about me, and Henry just shakes his leaves a little. I wonder if I’m actually part tree, not part witch.

Sometimes, I get the sense that I’m part me as well, which is a relief.

[It is worth noting that my Love has a special intuitiveness with plants and animals, and he seems to have good instincts about Henry, too. He and Henry had a nice moment together recently one golden autumn morning, and I get the sense that Henry approves of him.]

On my walk today I pocketed pinecones and leaves that caught my eye and was reminded of how often I did so with my children when they were little. I’ve had such a strong instinct to gather these treasures lately that I’ve been tempted to start bringing a bucket with me like I did with the kids so long ago. Shiny chestnuts freed from spiky green shells, leaves, cones, sticks, stones, blades of pretty grass, dandelions.

Sometimes we want to gather close to our hearts all the things that make us feel solid and safe, all the things that bring us back to ourselves when random fears, anxieties, and stresses all make us feel like we’ve been scattered. Too far. Too wide.

On today’s walk I noticed that the dry, fallen leaves from the sycamore trees are louder than all the others when they skitter on sidewalks. The sycamore voice is similarly strong when the wind blows through its leaves.

It makes me smile, thinking that Henry doesn’t really whisper any better than my daughter, which is fine with me, because I’ve never had much use for secrets.

Sometimes, it is difficult for me to tell the difference between a secret and an unknown thing, between a truth deliberately kept hidden and a thing that has not yet made itself known. There is uncertainty in both, and uncertainty can be especially frightening if you’ve ever lost more than you ever thought you would. We try to protect ourselves, once we are strong again, but we don’t really know how. We are clumsy with our defenses because the enemy is a vague and foggy thing – usually the unknown itself. We don’t know its intentions and our instinct is to shield ourselves. Sometimes, too, we are the unsolved thing, which can feel too wild. Maybe this is what Henry meant. Maybe, when life has been full of transitions, it seems as though we need to answer questions, solve for x, know the future, listen for whispers, listen through them.

Sometimes Henry seems so heroic to me. He doesn’t need to fathom the nature of the things that might threaten him, and he doesn’t waste time on false senses of security that might be gained through defense mechanisms, because he doesn’t really have any, except for being what he is. If he loses a branch to weather or to a tall truck passing by, he lets go, and keeps growing. He keeps being his sycamore self because it is the only thing a sycamore can do. I tell him how beautiful this is. And somehow, I know he’s rooting for me, hoping I settle into my sycamore self, or whatever kind of tree, or witch, or me, I am.

Love, Cath