Walking Trees

My father is a story teller. One of the best ones he has told lately is about how the trees walk when we're not looking. I don't know how true that may be, but I know I feel a lot like those walking trees right now.

In order for trees to walk, they must pull up their roots, leave parts of them behind and immediately sink their roots into another location. If the trees choose to come back to the place they have originally come from, the parts of roots they have left behind will have died. There will be very little way of connecting to exactly what was left behind.

I can be like a tree in the respect that I can sink my roots quickly into whatever place I am in order to survive there. The downside to this is that I continue to pull up my roots and that hurts. It feels similar in many ways to pulling out hairs by the root which is also something that happens on a regular basis. These days though, I am more like a walking tree.

I have three or more places that I can call home. The only problem with this is that it requires roots to be in each place. There are roots waiting for me in each place, but I have to tug on the roots in other places in order to move in between them. Sometimes it is a similar feeling to someone pulling on a ponytail, but other days it feels as though someone is attempting to rid my head of all my grey hairs. And that would be painful.

Somedays it feels as though I have been a tree cut into pieces in order to transplant. It's difficult to be in three different pieces and yet have enough strength to stand against storms in three different places. There is not enough strength in my trunk to support all those who wish to sit in my branches or be sheltered underneath my branches. In order to survive I must focus simply on one of the places that I belong to and not allow myself to become too thin.

The idea of stretching myself too thin will not come as a shock to many of you who know me well. No is not a word that makes its way into my vocabulary very often and I always seem to be somewhere near the point of snapping because I have stretched so far. Over the past two years though, it has become a different kind of stretching. Not only have I over committed myself in terms of school work, but I am also a part of two L'Arche communities who both support me in many ways. I have relationships that I am attempting to support in many cities and many countries. I have family obligations and gigs that I don't necessarily want to do. I tend to stretch myself well. The only problem when I begin to stretch myself is that I also begin to shrink. When I get into too many things, I forget to eat and lose weight that I am aware I really shouldn't.

While I am beginning to tug on my roots in a few places in preparation to begin walking again, I am becoming more aware of how far I can stretch and how many roots I can sustain. The number of roots I can sustain have nothing to do with my capacity to love, but simply how many places I can connect myself to on a regular basis.

I'm picking up my roots to begin walking again. Maybe on the way, I'll find myself whispering back at some of the trees.