Marred in the Potter's Hands (The Easter Tree)

When we moved to our acre in 1992, I purchased a tree from one of those nursery catalogs you get in the mail. It was a flowering cherry and was never really supposed to get very large, maybe 8 feet tall, with a span of 12 feet or so. I had a vision that it would mark the boundary between our "parking area" and the "front yard". We put a mobile home on an acre of pasture that formerly housed horses--for as long as I lived in Junction City anyway--so I use the term "yard" loosely. It was not very big when I planted it--no taller than me, having arrived in the mail.

It was a quaint little tree. And it marked the corner of the parking area well. Then one day, after it had been growing in it's spot for about 10 years, we had a really big windstorm. Limbs and entire trees were falling all around us. My neighbor had a sequoia in his yard that forked about 5 feet off the ground, and during this windstorm one of the forks fell, essentially cutting my little tree in half.

I was heartbroken. I loved my little tree. But I didn't cut it down. I decided to wait and see what it would do. Six weeks later, it bloomed.

The next winter, when I pruned it, I left every branch that was reaching over to fill the gap. Clearly, the tree wanted to live. Just a little over a year after the storm that tried to kill it, it was again the focus of my mother-in-law's Easter tradition. In fact, we have dubbed this tree "The Easter Tree". We had called it that before it was ever damaged because it is esseintally directly in front of our living room window, the "centerpiece" of our front yard, and was small enough that my mother-in-law could hang treat-filled plastic eggs from it for our children on Easter.

But beyond being a tree to hang eggs from, it has become, to me, a tree of hope, a tree of resurrection. I had thought it would die, but with careful pruning it has flourished. When you look at this tree in full bloom, you probably would not guess that it had ever been bisected. You are caught by its beauty and fragrance. If your eyes land on its trunk, the scars are evident. It's only when you see it in the winter, stripped bare of its leaves, that you can read the story of injury and regrowth.

And now, seven years later, the tree has seemed to flourish, growing bigger than I ever expected it to. It is now big enough for a tire swing. Every spring we enjoy its fragrant blooms and the "snow" when the petals fall. The cats play tag in its branches. It provides camoflauge and rest for migrating canaries and finches every year. It sends up suckers from it roots 40 feet away! But most of all, it is a continual reminder that life follows death, spring follows winter, and restoration follow loss.