schism.ca

The big news of the last couple months has been that my mom decided to sell her house. This is a house that has been in the family for nearly 45 years; the only one I have ever known. It’s the place that, to me, has always been home. There’s so many stories that have come out of the last little while, so many little rituals and memories.

As of today, the house is out of our hands. 7 Cardill belongs to someone else. The letting go has been hard for me. That house and everything about it not only embodies my family and my growing up, but is also, in a lot of ways a character. A family member. I feel sometimes either like I’ve disowned it (literally) though I did not not want to, or that it’s somehow died. I think the latter is just a coping mechanism, whereas the former is more the truth. We all agreed that it was the right thing to do at this time, but it’s clear to me that sometimes, the right thing doesn’t feel right at all. I guess change is just inevitable. Even the things you thought were forever really are not.

I’d like to tell you a little story about the house from last night. I dunno how many stories I’ll tell, but this one hit me. Last night, after everyone had gone, and I had looked my last upon those rooms and hallways, I went out to the back yard. Having been built in the ’60s, the house has a sizable back yard–probably more land than the house actually occupies.

Throughout the years, my family had many trees in the yard, all of which we planted, as originally the land was a farmer’s field and had no trees when the neighbourhood went up. In my time, we had a row of five pines along the back of the yard; two apple trees (macintosh and golden delicious); a pear tree; a plum tree; a big, beautiful cherry tree in whose shade my father spent many hours reading and sleeping; a couple of birch trees; a magnolia; a black walnut tree; and two silver maples.

Today, all that’s left are the magnolia and the maples. Either age or sickness took the others. Rarely, my dad decided that a tree had to go for other reasons, but I don’t recall that happening more than once or twice. We liked having the trees, much as the leaves around this time of year were irksome.

I stood in the back yard, and it was a little strange to see it so unmanicured. Given we knew we were moving, not a lot of effort was put into landscaping and maintenance of the outside–we spent most of our time moving and tidying the inside. As a result the backyard was utterly blanketed with yellow leaves from the maples. Usually, these were all raked up and removed, but last night, they were all there. I loved wading through them and hearing them crunch and whisper under my feet.

I thought it’d be dark out back, given that it was well past 9pm when I was back there, but I could see almost everything. Maybe it was because the moon was waxing into full for Nov. 2 and the cloud cover created some sort of diffuse glow, but the back yard was almost as detailed as it is at twilight.

The only things back there were the trees and the bird bath. I remembered these trees; I know them very well. The big maple at the rear corner of the lot is older than I am. My brother tells me it was fortunate happenstance that it grew where it did. Apparently, when the house was built, there were all these maple keys floating around from wherever. One of them took root somewhere on the property, and my mom decided she’d try to save it, so she replanted it in the corner, in the hope that it would be out of the way enough to not fall to construction or lawn care or whatnot. And there it thrived. It’s so very high now, and so very strong, I think that it’d stand there for a long, long time to come. I truly hope it does. I cannot count the times that I climbed that tree, both with friends, but also alone to just sit in it and think while it cradled me in its crooks and leaves and cool bark. It tolerated my carving girlfriend’s initials into it, up in the highest branches I could climb to. It was the base of many a ‘fort’ I built as a kid, and it supported more than one hammock over the summers it has been there. It is an old soul, nearly as old as the house itself, and it has long stood there and watched over it.

The other maple is younger. I brought it home one day. As I recall, Northdale Public School had a thing when I was in second or third grade wherein they gave each student a sapling on the occasion of Arbour Day. Heh. I don’t think that children today even know there was such as thing as Arbour Day. Anyway, I chose a black walnut sapling and brought it home. We tried it in various locations on the property, but eventually, my dad figured it wasn’t happy and wouldn’t grow, and even if it did, it would attract lots of squirrels with its fruit, so he wound up giving it to the neighbour. As it happened, the tree thrived in his yard, and stands there still, not 10 feet from our property line. The silver maple I brought home the next day. It turned out that the school had extras, and any student who wanted one could come to the office and get a ‘leftover’ tree. I picked the silver maple, and brought it home. We planted it in a couple places before it finally found its ultimate home close to the entrance way of the back yard, about 20 or so meters from the older maple my mom planted. There it grew, very happy, and there it stands still. It wasn’t ever good for climbing because it didn’t grow many climbable branches in arm’s reach, but birds loved it. I always felt proud that this huge tree was so happy, and that I had brought it home and it did well. It’s an old, old, friend.

Last night, as I was standing there by the birdbath, the trees were raining leaves all around me. It was completely quiet, and I could hear the regular soft whisperings of leaves touching the other leaves as they made it to the ground. It sounded like little animals or something. It felt decidedly like I was not alone. I looked up to see if I could follow one of them from its fall from the canopy, and it was a little too dark to tell. But I could see the silhouette of the branches of both trees reaching out across the gray sky, and I noticed for the first time that they could just barely touch one another. The branches of these two trees that had stood together and yet apart for so many decades were finally able to reach out and connect.

That completely filled me with a joyous kind of sadness. On the one hand, they are losing their family, and I am losing them. On the other, they now have one another in a way that they never have. I hope they stand for many, many more years. I hope they are blessed with sunlight, and birds nesting in their branches, and squirrels that can now jump between them without ever touching the ground. I hope they are happy. Most of all, I hope the new owners treat them with reverence. They are very much old souls, and they are the steadfast guardians of the backyard at 7 Cardill.

Long may they stand in silent watchfulness over my childhood home.