What is the hole in your tree?

© lillisphotography via iStockphoto.com

When I was a little girl we had a tree in our front yard and it was dotted with a few sizable knot holes. I remember watching little black ants crawl in and out them all day long, sipping on the sticky sap, caviar for the colony.

Every time I drew a tree as a child I drew that tree. I colored the leaves and the grass Crayola green, and right on the front of the tree trunk I pinned a great big knot hole. Sometimes, I drew the ants, and sometimes, I didn't.

When I was 17-years-old, someone told me that the knot holes we draw in trees as children can represent the literal holes in our lives -- secrets we've buried; losses we've endured; precious things we've had taken; shame we've carried.  

Throughout my college years I often had late-night dorm talks with close friends about the various holes in their trees. We were all Gen Xers, born sometime between 1964 and 1971. The stories were as crushing as they were varied, but everyone had at least one.

There were the girls who had been molested in childhood. Sadly, that was statistically one out of three, so there was never any short supply of those particular knot holes. And, there were the guys -- several of them -- who grew up without fathers. Those knot holes drilled deeper and oozed more than others.

I remember one friend telling me his mother had been so promiscuous, he didn't even know who his father was. In fact, his father didn't even know his son existed. This created a gigantic hole of shame he hid from the world.

But, every Christmas I receive a photo greeting card from him. His wife and children grow lovelier with each passing year. He was so determined in college to invent a fabulous life; to kiss the past goodbye and fill that terrible knot hole created for him by someone else.

The summer before we all graduated college, a couple with whom I was good friends permanently redefined their on-again, off-again relationship. She told me one night that he had finally told her in between violent sobs about the hole in his tree. Because of it, he could never marry her. She promised to never reveal to anyone what the hole was, and she never did. I would never be able to imagine a hole so big that it could swallow up such a sweet and perfect girl who loved someone so much, but his hole was that big.

A decade later, I heard that guy was an enormously talented drag queen performing in bars. The day I learned this was the same day I learned he died of AIDS. He was too beautiful, too wonderful to die like that, but he did.

The first time someone asked me about the hole in my tree I told them it was just the nook inside the shade where the ants lived and where I once played. It was the frequent object of my distraction on the days when the mean, old man in the butter-yellow van came creeping down Sigman Street. The doors in the back of his truck would fly open to reveal a carnival of candy. He barked as he pulled out the trays of licorice and suckers, chocolate and taffy. Sometimes, I had money to buy candy, and sometimes, I didn't.

I was standing under that tree, so many times in the shade of summer, the grass so cool, and the dew in the mornings washed my feet. Under the eave of the house there was a wasp nest, but the hornets never flew under the tree. It was my Banyan, my Brooklyn, my Terabithia. My curiosity, preoccupation and escape from all that sanded against the grain.

There were times I was caught in the ungodly spokes, but in all my pictures the tree was winking at the knot hole. It wasn't so big. And, I eat the gnarly hollow spoon by spoon even now; grateful for the grit it gave me to devour anything that threatens the life I am inventing for my children, two of whom still believe they might can eat the moon. 

From The Bridge to Terabithia:

He thought about it all day, how before Leslie came, he had been a nothing – a stupid, weird little kid who drew funny pictures and chased around a cow field trying to act big - trying to hide a whole mob of foolish little fears running riot inside his gut. It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn’t king the best you could be? Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on. For hadn’t Leslie, even in Terabithia, tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world – huge and terrible and beautiful and very fragile?

Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn’t there, so he must go for both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.

As for the terrors ahead – for he did not fool himself that they were all behind him – well, you could just have to stand up to your fear and not let it squeeze you white.