Today, a promise between Phoebe and me: no subletting our space unless both of us stay in the same place.

I promised Phoebe I’d forget that damn straw devil and its infernal maker. She says I have too much time on my hands, “Idle—the devil,” and such superstitious nonsense. I caught someone filming me while I was staking out our building. I felt my privacy evaporate, and that my behaviour was open to enormous amounts of misinterpretation (some can’t see the truth through the mediums). I have begun to seek out the trees, instead of demons and devils, like the mighty tiger and my cousin Dean.

“Keep your head down, and stay out of the trees,” my grandfather told Dean the year he got his first set of golf clubs and my sister bought a print of a snow tiger in a tree. That same year I was uprooted by my first girlfriend and began to nurture my strong dislike for patchouli, patchouly and even pachouli.

As I said, I’ve been spending time with trees, and when I do, I feel what we all know—their fidelity. We forget we don’t know trees. We don’t name them, we don’t talk with them, we don’t touch them or listen to them . . . They are not of our kind, yet they give us more than we give them. We admire them until they offend us and then we cut them down for being true to their nature—growing in their own directions. You give them attention, and they grow with you. You don’t, and they still grow but you don’t see it. Yes, Howard’s grandfather was in hospital. He thought his grandfather was withering into a trunk of the man he loved, but, like the trees themselves, Howard’s grandfather has recovered and is showing us life. As a child I loved going for walks in Central Park with my sister and grandparents and their dog, Lucky. I remember the canopies of the trees being imposing, but I would always return to one willow whenever we went for a walk. Phoebe and I were there this past weekend and I took her to where my favourite tree used to be. We sat on the ground and I told her about our family walks in the park. She told me that, given enough time, the branches of the willow would have touched the ground, making a curtain, hiding us away from the world, and that it was okay to cry over the stump that is all that is left of it.

This spring the world seems colder, distant, and yet we still welcome it, as if our kinship were excited and we were tightly fastened to the truth—trees, and their lives, do matter; and only touch can translate our feelings to weeping willows, plum trees and people.

Today Dean will be among the trees while trying to stay clear of them, my sister will love the life in every one, and Phoebe and I will watch them grow, talk with them and learn their names. Straw devils be damned because today I hope to gain more understanding of the fidelity of trees.

~JB