09/23/2024
My Brother And The Cottonwood Tree
Our dad died at age 47. I was 16. My brother, Michael, named after our father, was 22. He and Mike (we called our parents by their first names) were working long hours to complete a job that would have paid the family’s debts and allowed the business to grow and give us some financial security. We were not wealthy and by many standards were poor but did not know it. We were rich in family, not in money. Agnes, our mother, was 45 and worked for the family business, essentially farming.
We lived in a limestone and timber house, no air conditioning. It had wall heaters, linoleum floors and crude plumbing. Mike and Agnes had quarried the stone, laid it, roofed it with asphalt shingles and raised the five of us kids in that rough but sturdy edifice. The patterns of fossilized stone in the family room walls are embedded in my memory as surely as the art hung on the walls of our friends’ homes. I can still see the embedded clam shells and trilobites and snails peeking out of the hard chalk stone, held together by sandy mortar troweled in by Mike and Agnes and, no doubt by Michael and Martha, two little farm kids helping their folks make a home. Agnes was pregnant with me, as she sat on her mason’s stool, facing each stone with mallet and chisel, fitting each stone into its place, fifty pounds at a time, through the Kansas winter and spring, when I was born.
At the south end of that house grew a small cottonwood tree, snug up against what would become Agnes’ sewing room, giving shade from the hot sun of summer and shielding that part of our house from winter winds.
By the time Mike died suddenly as a result of lifting too-heavy ballast for a road grader, that tree had encroached on our asphalt shingle sided house and threatened its strength. Each windstorm beat its branches against the windows. It had to go.
Agnes assigned removal of that now-large cottonwood to Michael and me. Armed with an unreliable chain saw and various axes and shovels, we cut that tree down , piece by piece, hauling the trunk and branches to the creek bank nearby, to be swept away at the next flood event.
That was in 1964. A few years later, Michael was trying to finish college, Martha had married and moved with her husband and daughter to an out of state university, I left for college in Topeka, Susan and David were in school at Lincoln Elementary and Hays High and Agnes had taken a job at the new factory in Hays, Travenol. Our old house deteriorated, little money being available for repairs or improvements.
By the time I finished law school and returned to Hays with my wife and our kids, the old farm home was empty and had to be demolished.
To my surprise, I discovered that the tree Michael and I had “removed” had grown back. Its stump and roots had survived our efforts and when the house was burned and bull dozed, that tree grew back, even bigger and taller, except it was now hollow. It actually had encased the old stump, which then rejoined the soil, leaving room inside for an elm tree to sprout and flourish, protected by the parent cottonwood.
Now , that tree is the most beautiful of all the trees at our farm. It is seventy plus feet tall, with a crown diameter of one hundred feet. It sits on a raised k**b, surrounded by native grass. It catches the south Kansas wind, its beautifully shaped green leaves sounding like gentle rain as they rustle. In the late afternoon and evening, the leaves catch the Sun, thousands of green mirrors scintillating, shimmering and glittering in the breeze.
When the tree drops its leaves each autumn it looks like it is raining gold and the gentle arc of the helicoptering leaves is nature’s way of telling us of the arrival of a new season.
The birds, especially the crows and hawks, love that tree, It offers the highest vantage point on the farm.
The deer use the tree as a stopping point in their carefully planned wandering to and from the water of Big Creek, with the turkeys taking their daily stroll along the same path, stopping at the tree to reconnoiter before venturing into the open alfalfa field.
That cottonwood tree, given up to nature, those 60 years ago, serves as a reminder that sometimes we need to look with a broader horizon, to see things as they really are. Michael and I have always been bound by that tree, connected through our common experience, reminded of the fact that time brings unexpected benefits. Had we not spent that time together taking that tree down; had we not had the past sixty years of watching it flourish; had we not seen how that tree in effect befriended its companion; we would not be quite the same brothers to each other. Just as the cottonwood withstood our pruning and cutting and digging, Michael’s life shows how to persevere and his examples of surviving great trauma and trouble have reminded me of why we never give up, always give our best, know we will come back strong and helpful and happy.
Michael died Sunday, September 22, 2024 at 10:36 P.M. He was 82 years old.
His last illness was lightning fast, from perfectly healthy to deathly ill in four weeks. His death was too quick to prepare for, like watching that tree disappear sixty years ago.
As I sit outside my own stone house, a 140 year old dairy barn built by Volga German immigrants, I marvel at the beauty and strength of our tree that returned from the simple stump we left. I cannot help but think what you know I am thinking. In the song of those leaves, I hear his voice. In those sturdy branches I see his strength. In the glow of the Kansas Golden Hour I see Michael’s handsome visage. I know he is still with us and will be forever. He encircles us with those strong sinewy arms, protecting us just as rhe cottonwood protects its elm friend embraced by it, their shared roots drinking fresh fallen rain water from that k**b of land it inhabits. In some world mother earth is balancing the scales, a sturdy man trading places with a sturdy tree, each speaking to us, bending in the wind, giving cool shade to those who need it, the glittering leaves moving with the supple arms and giving shelter and aid to others in time of need.
From John T. Bird
