The Christmas Tree (5 page)

Ah-hah!
Something was moving. Then I saw it. A quick little bird with bright yellow patches on the top of his head, on his breast and on his wings.
Check check check.

This place was full of surprises. It still is.

I walked over to the tree on tiptoe.

“I have something very wonderful to show you, Tree,” I said.

With great care I opened my satchel and brought out the envelopes that contained my precious collection of leaves and bark and twigs and seeds, much like the ones we've been collecting today. I spread this treasure on the grass in front of the tree and spoke to him very seriously, as though I were an adult and he were a child. “Tree,” I said, “pay attention.”

Naturally Tree sat quite still, but I waited a little, just to make sure he was ready.

“These leaves and things are from your cousins,” I told him. I giggled quite a bit, not because I thought what I was saying was silly but because I was nervous. But the bird with the yellow patch was singing cheerfully, as though he were encouraging me to go on.

So I did. It wasn't easy, because my father had explained it all to me and he had died a long time ago. But I kept at it and remembered quite a bit of the basics. I told Tree about how to identify the various parts of trees—about bark and seeds, and showed him the difference between an oak and a sycamore. It wasn't a bad lecture for a beginner I must say, and I became quite demonstrative. “The twigs hold the leaves on, just like my arm holds my hand,” I said to him, and waved my arms in the air. And I felt quite triumphant when I remembered that the leaves had something to do with providing food for the trees, though I had no idea how, exactly.

I tried looking closely at Tree, thinking I might learn something by studying his leaves. But when I got close, I saw that he didn't have leaves like other leaves. Close up, I could see that his feathery arms were made of lots of short skinny green spikes that spiraled up along the twig. Here and there I could see a space where it looked as though one of the green spikes had fallen out. Getting as close as I could, I saw something that looked almost like a little hook where the green spike must have been.

It was all very interesting but didn't tell me a thing about how leaves made food, which was frustrating.

“You must be tired,” I said to Tree, meaning, of course, that I was feeling a little tired myself. “Why don't you take a little rest. I'll lie down next to you to help you go to sleep.”

Then, once again, I heard that familiar
check check check
, which reminded me to put away my seeds and things before a bird decided to disturb them.

Once everything was safely in my satchel I lay down on the grass and took a much-needed rest with my new friend Tree.

❄ ❄ ❄

By the time Sister Anthony's story was finished, the sun was well on its way to the horizon. The clearing was especially lovely as the golden light of late afternoon filtered through the needles of the evergreen trees. The children murmured their good-byes, as if they were still in the thrall of the story they'd just heard. And I think I was a little in awe myself as I shook Sister Anthony's hand. As I walked away I was struck by how sharp my hearing seemed, as though somebody had turned the volume up. Suddenly the woods seemed full of sounds I hadn't heard for twenty years. When had I stopped listening?

Chapter Five

Teachers

Anyone who has had a friend or been one knows that it takes an awful lot of work. That's especially true when one of you is human and the other is a tree. You can't exactly ask what will make your friend happy, or what's making him sad. Conversation becomes a rather imaginative game, and Sister Anthony had clearly become a master of it. (In fact, a lot of human-to-human friendships might improve if they took the care she took to understand that tree.)

This became obvious to me over the next few years as my Christmas-tree talk developed into an annual event. This did not feel like an obligation, because I always left with more than I came with. Though she had never left Brush Creek, Sister Anthony had an enviable excitement about life—not to mention an endless supply of stories. There was always a new crop of kids, so she could easily have repeated herself, but she continually seemed to find new mysteries to explore in the natural world, and new parables that could be drawn from her life. I don't know how she did it. I'd traveled all over the world, seen my work written up regularly in the
Times
, yet so often I felt weary of it all.

I'd like to say I sat at her feet and just soaked up all that inspiration. Mostly, though, after the kids left, I'd start to complain—about the bureaucracy at work, about the public's failure to appreciate all the beauty we spread out for them at Rockefeller Center, or whatever else was driving me crazy on that particular day. Sometimes I'd have a problem I couldn't work out and Sister Anthony was almost always able to help just by asking the questions that would lead me to the answer.

“How do you do it?” I asked her one day.

“What's that?” she replied.

“Tell stories the way you do,” I said, then corrected myself. “No, not just that. How did you become a teacher?”

She had been showing me a new herb garden she had planted that year. Each section was carefully marked with a tag explaining what the herb was used for, and a bit of folklore about it. I had just rubbed some rosemary between my fingers, and knew from then on the smell of rosemary would always remind me of Brush Creek.

She took some time to answer. “It all started with Tree, I suppose. After we first met he became part of my routine. I would go to morning prayers with the Sisters and help clean up after breakfast and then on sunny days I would immediately head outdoors.”

Unconsciously, her face tilted toward the sun. “Every day I discovered something new—a bird whose song I hadn't heard before, a patch of wildflowers. My expeditions always ended with Tree, so I could report on what I'd found that day. No matter how much fun I had on my own, my adventures always felt the truest when I turned them into stories for Tree.”

I wanted to know more. “I understand that,” I said, “but you've acquired a pretty impressive body of knowledge. Tree may have gotten you started but how did you know what stories to tell? Did you learn it all by yourself.”

“Oh no,” she said. “I had wonderful teachers.”

I was surprised. “Where did you go to school?” I asked.

She laughed. “Right here,” she said. “Remember, I grew up in a different era. No one paid much attention to whether you were formally enrolled in school or not. I would say that my schooling was unusual but very complete.”

“Let's see now, there was Sister Matilda, who was excellent at math, who taught me my numbers. Sister Steven taught me history, with lots of attention to the great battles. I also have her to thank for my chess game.”

“Then there was Sister Agnes, who introduced me to science. She did most of the cooking and let me use her kitchen as a laboratory. I learned geography from the visiting nuns. They would take me into the library and point to where they'd been on the globe, and tell me what life was like there. All of them took turns with reading and writing. They all had favorite stories they wanted to pass on to someone and I suppose I was the someone they had at hand.”

I interrupted. “So who was your favorite?”

“This probably won't surprise you,” she said. “I met her through Tree.” And with that, she began yet another story.

❄ ❄ ❄

I was frustrated because I knew I hadn't yet found a way to speak Tree's language, I didn't know what would really interest him. I felt that he would trust me only if I could tell him about the world, just as my father had done for me. I had already figured out who could help me, I just didn't know how to persuade her.

Her name was Sister Mary and she was the gardener at Brush Creek. I knew it wasn't going to be easy. While the other nuns went out of their way to chat with me, Sister Mary kept to herself. Whatever you asked her, whether it was if she'd like more tea or what time it was, her answer was always the same: “Hmmmm.” She was usually outside, either working or wandering around talking to herself.

She was also a bit of a mess. She always had a smudge of dirt on her forehead, strands of hair kept popping out from under her veil, no matter how often she tucked them in. I had noticed something else. Whenever the faintest sound came from the sky, Sister Mary would automatically say the name of the bird, then begin pointing upward, all the while rotating like a human telescope. The other nuns used to say, “Sister Mary's a little distracted.” But she kept the flowers and bushes beautifully tended and everyone agreed her tomatoes were the best they'd ever tasted.

She was eccentric and would have seemed frightening except for one thing. She had the most engaging eyes I had ever seen. They were deep blue and crinkly at the edges. They were smiling eyes.

I began to secretly follow Sister Mary wherever she went. When she wasn't outdoors, she was studying in the library, always in the same section, where the books about plants and birds were.

As soon as she left, I would retrieve the book she'd been reading and open it. Most of the words were too difficult for me, so I looked at the pictures. They were lovely, but I wanted to know more.

One day I was sitting on the floor staring at one of these drawings when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jumped straight up in the air. I hadn't heard a footstep!

Then I looked up and saw Sister Mary looking at me.

“Why have you been following me around?” she asked.

I was so surprised I couldn't speak. Sister Mary sounded … normal.

She didn't wait for an answer. “Let me show you something,” she said, walking over to the corner of the library where there were some books in a glass case I'd never noticed. She opened the door and motioned for me to join her.

I didn't see anything special. Just a row of slender books bound in what looked like heavy brown paper.

Sister Mary pulled one of the books out. Someone had pasted a square of paper onto the front and written the title in neat letters.

“
The Uninvited Guest
,”
read Sister Mary.

She opened the book and showed me the first page. There was a little pencil drawing of a kitchen sink filled with dishes and a tiny splotch of gray. I thought it was charming.

Sister Mary read. “First, a gray shadow.”

On the next page a bright green foot and tail appeared at the edge of the sink.

“Then a foot and a tail,” said Sister Mary, continuing to read. Finally an entire green lizard made his appearance. He was a sleek little fellow, who seemed to dance off the page. In the story he played, had a snack, and then decided to stay.

When the story was finished I laughed and clapped and wanted to see the rest of these funny little books—
Never Underestimate the Cunning of a Fly
and
How the Sour Apple Tree Learned to Smile
, are two I remember.

I asked where they had come from. They seemed so perfect for children.

“The old man who built this place made them for his children,” Sister Mary told me.

I remember her sighing and looking a bit sad. “It's a shame none of them chose to take these books with them,” she said.

When I asked Sister Mary to read me the book about the fly she replied, “No, you read to me.” She helped me make out the words I didn't recognize, and was wonderful about answering all my questions about flies and lizards and goodness knows what else. It wasn't just reading that she taught me, but about all of the mysteries in everyday things.

❄ ❄ ❄

We had a long talk that day and when we were finished I of course ran straight to Tree.

“Listen to this, Tree,” I said, “I've been telling you all kinds of things but you haven't said much about yourself to me at all. I thought maybe you were afraid or shy. But I've asked Sister Mary to help us.”

I went on and on, about how Sister Mary wasn't strange at all once you get to know her and how she knew everything there was to know about trees and birds and plants, and about how grand the library was. I told him that Sister Mary even told me that one day I would be able to read all those books, which seemed impossible to me at the time.

Then I remembered. I had come to tell Tree his story.

“You are a Norway Spruce,” I said rather grandly, in the kind of voice you might use to tell a frog that he is really a prince. “You are one of them”—I nodded toward the tall trees at the edge of the clearing—“and they didn't come here by accident. They didn't come from seeds that were carried here by birds or the wind or …”

I couldn't remember if Sister Mary had told me anything else about how seeds could be carried.

“No matter,” I continued. “The Old Man who used to own this place planted those big trees a long time ago. Maybe thirty or forty years.”

I paused to let Tree absorb the full importance of what I was telling him. I was really quite theatrical.

“Norway spruces grow very fast and are very beautiful. They were perfect because the Old Man wanted everything to look just so right away. And then the Sisters moved here and sometime last year Sister Mary noticed a tiny little tree growing here, off on its own.

“That was you!” I shouted.

Suddenly there was much activity overhead. There was a flurry of flapping and trilling, as the birds living in the Norway spruces came out to see who was making all the racket.

I saw the familiar little birds with the yellow markings. There were others, too. Birds with red chests and other birds that were red all over. There were striped birds and plain brown ones. Birds that sang up the scale and birds that sang down. I wanted to memorize the way they looked so I could ask Sister Mary about them.

With my head tilted back so I could see the birds, I ran round and round in circles, trying to get a closer look. Finally I was so dizzy I plopped down on the ground, and rolled in the grass until I landed right next to Tree.

How lovely it was!

Then I remembered I hadn't told Tree nearly everything I had to tell him.

“Did you know?” I asked him mysteriously, “that you can make music?”

“Norway spruces are used to make violins,” I explained, scratching away on an imaginary violin. I was a fairly literal-minded child, so the idea of this kind of radical transformation had astounded me when Sister Mary told me about it. After that, I wanted to know all the possible uses for trees.

I told Tree how trees became paper, and paper became books. Then, having saved the best for last, I told him another use for Norway Spruces. I remember I was very dramatic about it, whispering, as if this piece of information was too precious to discuss in an ordinary voice.

“Christmas trees.”

I pointed to the large trees all around us, with their perfect triangles and big fancy cones. “Look at them. It's true. Norway spruces make the loveliest Christmas trees!”

Just then, the breeze picked up, ruffling Tree's branches, as though he were telling me he thought this was a very exciting proposition.

I reached over and touched his needles. “Not you, silly. You're much too small,” I said to him. “Besides, you're to stay right here with me.”