// The contribution//
Her bones were bent ‘round and through the roots of the 300 year oak. It wasn’t until this year’s storm blasted the ground with lightening that the tree was lifted from its bed.
Before that storm… children danced around the tree. Hugged it … carved their initials and tied it every season with a yellow ribbon. My great great great grand mother was there when the seedling was first impregnated into the soil. After a time her daughter could be seen dodging her own pretended covering of eyes … counting, sometimes by twos then yelling - “ready or not … here i come!”
Whose skeletal remains did now meet the sun? Was it their sacrafice that allowed the timber to prosper so? Was it the odd nature of decay that called forth begging for ribbons and the hope of young love? Was it the spirit of a life not fully lived that endorsed such a source of strength for an entire lineage?
The bones malformed throughout the long years. Enough, as to disallow the scientific recreation of societal identity.
All that remains are the memories of young love and littlens pretending to count each and every number by ones. Or so it is told by the neighborhood gossips.
Plans are to bring in another seedling next Spring. Perhaps my daughter will next contribute to the story of the new Grand Oak tree. One; hopefully, that may not cry for the blood of her elders.
January 4, 2013
Laura Greenbacker
