The Loveliness of Trees

The first time Sam took me to the family compound, we had only just met the previous month. At the end of our ten-day Wilderness First Responder class, he returned home to Virginia, and I returned to my school in southern Vermont. It was September of 2001, and when 9/11 happened, it was a gorgeous and clear day. I spent every hour watching the television in shock with my students, and Sam spent his watching the Pentagon burn from the roof of the library at his school. We spoke briefly on the phone when he called me from Virginia—a phone call that seemed momentous, by virtue of his thinking of me in that historic and terrible moment.

My school was supposed to be heading to Thailand for the semester, but with the world so suddenly unfamiliar, we changed our plan and decided to travel to the desert Southwest, to climb and hike in the protected red rock canyons. Before my departure, Sam proposed we meet, one more time, at his parents' house in the Poconos of northeastern Pennsylvania.

We had only known each other a short time, and though I felt, from the moment I first spoke to him in the lunch line on our first day in NH, that he was the man I was meant to marry, I wouldn't have voiced that certainty out loud. I wasn't at all sure how he felt, but once I arrived in PA, my sense of him as a person expanded like a deep breath. His parents were away, but his brother was staying in the main house with a friend, or friends…I can't really remember them. What I do remember is every detail of my time with Sam in that special place.

We stayed in the cabin, separated slightly from the main house by a wooden deck. At twelve feet by sixteen, with a small woodstove and a sleeping loft, it was the kind of place I could have easily called home, especially given that I was living out of my backpack at the time. I was falling in love with Sam as quickly as my days were running out (before my departure to Utah), and our time in Pennsylvania was a big part of that. In the mornings Sam made coffee and we walked the perimeters of the various fields and meadows watching the progress of his slow, old dog Chester who was not at all confident I was a welcome addition to his love affair with the gentle and handsome Sam. On those walks I learned the history of the place, of Sam's paternal grandparents who bought 80 acres on that hilltop, and the summers spent there over many decades as the Jackson clan continued to expand. Sam's father is the youngest of four, three brothers and a sister: Ellsworth, then Calvin, then Elinor and Bruce—Sam's dad who, when he arrived at Yale, exercised his much-anticipated freewill by choosing to shed the name he'd been called by family (of which he had never been particularly fond), and introducing himself by his first given name of Sam.

When the grandparents passed on, the land was parceled out among the children, and Sam's father and each of his siblings grew and raised families of their own, who gathered there for vacations and family reunions over many years—some building, some camping, some just stopping by. By now Aunt Nip is gone, and Ellsworth and Cal are in their eighties, with Sam and Alden thankfully a healthy distance behind them in years, but each Fourth of July, the extended clan still returns, more cousins among the four tribes than I can keep count of, and certainly more of their children than I can ever keep straight. But each among them is warm and welcoming, more so than most people I've  met, and each is eager to hear and share the news of the year.

The family's branches return gradually over the holiday from a variety of bases in all four directions. And each, it seems, follows the same itinerary once there: unload at your tribe's designated place, and then meander down the dirt road, past Uncle Ells' house with the bronze Buddha out front, down to the pond for a swim. After catching up with whomever else is there, eventually, everyone meanders back to base, passing still more cousins on the way, agreeing to connect again after dinner, to see each other at the bonfire for the fireworks, to be back for another swim. The hillside is speckled with truck-sized blueberry bushes, in woods and meadows alike, and you gather and eat fistfuls wherever you go.

That first morning, eleven years ago, as Sam and I walked across the top of Aunt Nip's long sloping meadow, and worked our way down along the stone wall, amidst the cherry and ash woods, he told me that he pictured his wedding happening right there…with cousins everywhere, and a Frisbee game in the afternoon, and a pig roasting in a pit. When he described it to me, I wished myself into the scene. Some time later, when I first met his eclectic Uncle Ellsworth, who had been a Presbyterian minister, like his own father and brother both, bejeweled in turquoise rings and a curious robe, with white hair and stories of travel and thoughts on spiritual matters, I imagined him into the wedding story as well, delivering our vows in full summer sun. When Sam and I eventually did marry, it was in Vermont, in November, and without most of the people who make up this special family place. Our wedding was lovely, and special in its own way, but had I to do it over again, I would do it, gladly, as Sam first envisioned it.

Joining this tribe has been a relatively easy process given how gracious everyone is, but still it is in my nature to be worried about fitting in. That first visit, when Sam's parents weren’t there, I went upstairs in the main house to take a shower. On the way, I passed a portrait of his dad, the private school educated, Yale and Cambridge graduated, English teacher, holding a copy of The Odyssey. I was in my first high school teaching job, trying to figure out how to teach English, having not yet read The Odyssey, which of course I have done since. Sam's parents met at Cambridge. His brother went to Yale, as did his two sisters, the eldest of whom was also an English major. How could I spend a lifetime with this man, I wondered, and manage to never talk about books with his father or sister? How could I prevent them from knowing I was a phony? It didn't help that for a long time Sam's dad called me Curry instead of Kerry. But, at one of those Fourth of July gatherings, I was grateful to overhear him talking with his sister, Nip. "Curry? Who's Curry?" she demanded. When he identified me, Sam's girlfriend, Aunt Nip scolded him, "Curry? Her name is Kerry!" I didn't know her for long, but I certainly loved her for that.

There have been other moments when I have marked my progress into the clan as well, but none more completely than with the offering of Quinn Jackson into the tribe. 

When we arrived for the Fourth in 2010, I was 7 months pregnant and cousin Rob crossed a whole field to lay hands on the belly and bow down to offer some whacky and wonderful little blessing. A year later, sitting inside Uncle Ells' house, singing songs and eating ice cream to mark his 85^th birthday, Rob was sitting on the floor and Quinn (who could not yet walk) worked her way to his side, placed her hand on his knee and gazed up at him, eager, I imagine, to finally meet him. 

Last week, as I sat in the yard with Betsy, a soul sister-cousin whom I've come to love dearly, Sam went inside with Quinn to visit with his uncles, Ellsworth and Cal, and Quinn, having taken off all of her clothes in some sort of private celebration, lay stretched out and sleeping in the recliner, completely naked in the midst of the conversation, never waking despite the many openings and closings of the door, or the many exclamations of delight over her condition. "She is so comfortable in her life!" said Ells, and I thought of her father who is also that way.

On Ells' birthday this year, I was at the house alone while Quinn napped and Sam and his parents went to town for groceries. I looked up to see Ells coming to the side porch, his walking staff in hand, ski goggles and wide hat protecting his face from the sun. He was alarmingly unsteady in his gait, until he sat on the edge of the porch to rest. I went out, and helped him into a chair to catch his breath, and brought him some water; his fingers still jeweled with turquoise. He wasn't really sure who I was, as his memory is failing him a bit by now, and I never really had secure footing there in the first place. He asked me questions about his brother's house, and my connection to the clan, and whether or not I was still in college…I did my best to keep a straight face on that one, and tried as well to fill in the gaps.

Ells told me all about his current life, living in the "personal care home for the elderly," of which, he told me, he was one. He gazed out over Alden's gardens, the blueberry bushes and the landscape beyond them. "I've been thinking lately about the loveliness of trees," he said, "and the beauty they have to offer." I listened in agreement, feeling it a privilege to share that moment with him, bearing witness to his meditation, and meditating myself on the loveliness of trees. 

What an important ritual it is to gather with family for relaxed days and evenings, to hear the family stories. And for the elders to gather and take stock of how the clan has grown, and to take stock of their own lives, and enjoy the accomplishments brought forth for the offering.

How important for the men of the tribe to return to the stories of their youth, and in so doing, return to themselves.

And how important for the women of the tribe to gather in support of one another—to help each other laugh and be strong for the phases of family and the passing of the years. Through such a ritual, I understand now more than ever, we gather the strength needed to continue creating our own stories, and forming our own offerings to the tribe.

One night after dinner, when Sam and I walked down to Ells' house with some cold beer, we circled the house in the dark, peeking in the lit up windows to find Betsy and her daughters Jesse and Claire, and her sleepy granddaughter, Elizabeth. We snuck in the back door as they divvied up the work of counting the pills and arranging the necessaries of the elders who laboriously headed off to bed. After half an hour of laughing with them, before turning in ourselves, Sam and I snuck back into the cabin, past the sleeping Quinn, and slept soundly, despite the oppressive heat.

Last month was the one-year anniversary of changing my name to Jackson. I mentioned it to Sam in passing. "You've been a Jackson in my heart for much longer," he replied. Whether this is true, or Sam is just being the romantic poet he often is, I do feel more and more every year that I've found my people, and I'm grateful to know I have a branch, and so does Quinn.

Someday, when Quinn is old enough to remember it, we imagine having a pagan "christening" of sorts for her, during which we will gather her clan—her godless father and fairy godmother, among others—to welcome her formally into this life. Discussing such an event recently, Sam suggested we "bake her a giant cake in the shape of a lotus, and then we spend hours decorating it with pixie sticks, painting an elaborate mural that Quinn can then blow away in a symbolic gesture toward the impermanence of human life." It struck me right away as a good idea, both hilariously Sam and beautiful—a reminder to value the here and now, and of the only true eternal life—that which is handed down in stories, through the branches of the tree.