BY MAGGIE BEAMGUARD / Insider Editor
The diameter of the live oak in the center of the backyard equals about three of my arm spans. The trunk forks around shoulder height. An old climbing rope with a loop for a foodhold threads through it.
I can still feel the pressure from the loop on the arch of my foot, the roughness of the rope braids and the exact amount of strength my seven-year-old body required to hoist myself up that tree looming over my childhood home.
I stood under it for the last time last month, the day before closing on my parents’ house. The three-bedroom brick ranch has been a central character in my life story for 50 years. My first welcome to the house — in my mother’s arms — is immortalized in a 1976 photograph taken out front. Now, grief surfaced while birds sang under the branches now stretching across the breadth of the yard.
The seat created at the trunk’s bifurcation might as well have been my throne. Seated there, I made friends with the squirrels, directed friends in make-believe, read an inestimable number of books and dreamed many a day-dream.
Gymnastic rings still dangle from rusty chains attached to one trusty branch. The bark grows around them. I perfected a ring hold and a full flip in the summer of 1984, inspired by Mary Lou Retton’s performance at the Los Angeles Olympics.
The tree saw everything: teenagers sunbathing in baby oil, plastic lawn chairs full of laughing relatives, children playing hide-and-seek, pet funerals, cars pulling away for college. The grand old gal weathered Hugo and every hurricane before and since. It grew deeper roots and wider branches while my parents’ hair turned silver.
The fibers of the rope, my foothold into the oak’s arms, are slowly but surely being reclaimed by the tree. It has taken what I left behind and made it part of itself. Deeply embedded in the bark is the archive of my childhood.
Summertime does not last forever. Neither do parents. Or houses.
The keys to the house have been handed over, and the protection of these branches is no longer mine. Driving away from Lakeview Drive — and the house that made me and the tree that guarded me — was a sorrow.
But somewhere along I-95, I started thinking about how good it would be to get back home to West End. The late afternoon sun flickered through the pines once I reached the edge of Moore County. A comfortable sigh escaped when I turned into my driveway.
The air smells of resin on this warm winter day.
Beneath the long pines in my yard, a new story takes root.
Contact Maggie Beamguard at maggie@thepilot.com.