One dark morning when Allister was no longer a child, he walked up the steps to the home where he had been a child and stood on the then-leaning porch.
The paint was chipped, the windows were cracked, and the interior was dusty and hollow. Gone were the giggles and the games and the questions about growing and sharing and being an adult.
Soon it would all be razed and concrete would cover the grass and his childhood steps. And that was life and progress and Allister had settled his heart to move on and give in to what was inevitable.
Because that was evolution and there was parking that needed to be done.
Allister looked out at the oak that had always stood so tall and so strong in his family’s front yard. He stepped down from the porch and stood beneath the oak’s many arms, high above him. And the old oak welcomed Allister as if he had never left. Because the oak had never left.
Allister climbed up a large bough, curled himself against the trunk high above the ground, and pondered. It was all too impossible to fight. The opposing forces were so strong and Allister felt so weak. So alone. He traced the carved initials of a pair of secret lovers whom the oak had carried high above and kept secret. And Allister thought how strange it was that the oak had once let both swings and nooses dangle from its branches. But, in the end, the oak had never learned to tie. It only knew how to hold.
And, so, the oak cradled Allister and sighed a warm and bark-y sigh so slight that it could have been mistaken for breeze. And the oak breathed in what Allister did not need and breathed out what Allister needed most.
And Allister did what he came to do.
He climbed back down to the oak’s base and grabbed hold of the largest root that poked a branchy knuckle above the ground. And Allister pulled until the root uprooted. He slung the uprooted arm over his shoulder and, with both hands, uprooted the next biggest root and draped it over the opposite shoulder.
Allister pulled with all his might and the tree loosened its grip on the ground and uprooted.
And some will say that this is impossible (as some tend to do), but when people are pushed to extremes, the impossible is more than possible.
The impossible is necessary.
(And, for those who fixate on the impossible, I ask you kindly to please stop reading here. There is a multitude of text to read, some proven and some contrived, that will reinforce your opinion of our limits and our predetermined ends. And you are most welcome to it. But, that is elsewhere. Beyond this paragraph is an openness that you are not welcome to tamper with. And some will say that we are dreamers, that we are not living in reality. But, beyond this paragraph is the understanding that the only difference in dreams and reality is the position of the eyelids. Beyond this paragraph, is a collective widening of the heart and opening of the eyes to what is more. What we have been given and what we are to protect. The opening of fourteen billion eyelids will make the dream real. But, it takes only the opening of two to begin. And you are not welcome to close the eyes of a dreamer. We are dreaming for you, too.)
And Allister, with the oak’s two strongest roots over his shoulders, pulled the tree away from the land of their youth, all the long and short and thin and thick wooden root tentacles dragging miles behind him.
Where did he take the oak? I do not know. I keep looking, believe me. And I will know it when I find it. You will, too. It’s that towering oak with a swing dangling from each and every branch.
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