Virus Diaries: Uprooted

It began as a routine trek to retrieve the garbage cans from the street in front of our house. I could have left them there for a bit longer. But a good citizen am I, and mindful of the Good Neighbor reputation I am advancing.

Trudging down the drive, garbage can trailing behind, why not pick a few weeds on the way, weeds sprouted after recent rains, weeds whose miserable greedy roots suck my moisture from my nutrients from my soil in my garden. Pathetic chlorophyll freeloaders, posing among the properly planted and well-cultivated, invaders among my master-planned hybrid specimens.

I plucked one final garden-invading fiend. I thought I did. But it pulled back, hard. I yanked again, and again met unexpected resistance for so small a green growth. The final pull wrested loose its hold upon the soil, and its naked root danced in the air. I relished that this thing, like a hooked trout, would gasp and fade away.

But wait. The frail roots descended into an unexpected pod, split open like a bean exposed to moisture. This excavated thing was not a weed. Instead, I had uprooted a baby tree.

I felt a sudden guilt, the guilt that comes when a life is aborted. This thing was meant for a long and sturdy life, a life that I had destroyed.

Many years ago and quite by chance, I came across a high school friend at a bus station in Kalamazoo. Her youthful, carefree high school face had devolved into a lined, worn mask. She explained that she had had an abortion, and had never since fully recovered. Uprooting a life takes its toll.

And there lay my baby tree, uprooted. It was meant for grand things: nourishment for bugs and birds, shade for beasts and joy for two-legged guests. And seeds to birth new generations.

Limp and frail, I held its tiny trunk and naked roots in my hand. I met God’s creation, this tiny tree, in my front yard—now the vanquisher and the vanquished. I uprooted the tree, and, I suppose, it uprooted a bit of me.