Tale of the Cottonwoods

  

    The other Word Wranglers come up with the best analogies. I’ll read their posts—especially D’Ann’s—and I’ll wonder where she can possibly go with that. And boom, there it is again. Crap, I’ll think, why can’t I come up with things like that.

          So this morning I’m sitting here trying to come up with something good. Or at least something readable. Maybe even an analogy! And I’m looking out my office window at the hummingbirds on the feeder, bigger birds lifting and dropping on the breeze. The trees—we have cottonwoods, maples, and a couple of pine trees. A flowering plum I can’t see anymore through the ash tree we planted the year our oldest granddaughter was born. Up on the rise in the front yard, a sweet gum tree.

I love trees.

We’ve had some storms in the past year. Strong ones where the wind took down big limbs. We’ve even lost some of my favorite trees, including the weeping willow we planted without looking up—right underneath the power lines.

With regard to safety, we had a couple of the cottonwoods trimmed way back. One because of the fear it might land in our bed one dark and stormy night (if you’ve ever seen an 80-year-old cottonwood, you know there’s no room) and the other to hopefully save its life after huge limbs were torn away in the storms.

The trees looked awful after their barbering. Dark and gloomy and skeletal. “What have we done?” I said, all but wringing my hands.

“What we had to,” Duane answered. “They look bad, don’t they?”

Oh, yes, bad.

But with spring came green leaves and new branches and the cottonwoods are…well, they’re not like they were. But they’re beautiful. They’re healthy. They’re safer.

They’re better.

The next time I am asked to make revisions that make me whine and wail and swear they’ll ruin the story, I will remember the cottonwood trees. Or at least I’ll try to—I don’t really have this analogy thing down very well yet.

Have a great week!