Frame of Mind

Surrounded by boxes and bags and suitcases, I sat in the rear of the station wagon, caressing Poocat, tossing fitfully in my lap.  Having just recovered from the distemper that should have killed him, Poocat was an uneasy rider, and this was to be a long journey.

I had chosen to squeeze in among the jumbled contents in the back because there would be room for only the two of us.  The happy chatter from my parents, brother, and sisters, all excited about this move, only served to increase my anguish.   Another house, another city, another state.  Another school, another group of strangers who would be part of my world.

Why?  Why did we have to move again?  I had thought this time that Daddy had found his dream job - director of the Huntsville Community Action Committee.  He was helping people who needed help most - the elderly, the impoverished, the disabled.  But he had become disenchanted when politics played into the picture, and had found that his office was not allocated funds for some of the most critical needs.  So, when an opportunity to help on a larger scale presented itself, he took it, and now we were off to Memphis.

Every year of my life we had moved, sometimes twice in a year.  I was always the new girl, a painfully heavy burden for such an introvert as I.   Making new friends was a herculean effort.  But this past year had been different.  Somehow, everything just clicked.  Huntsville felt like...home.

I was thirteen and had my first experience with puppy love.  I had true friends; had lost twenty pounds and actually had a bikini that I looked good in.  My class was to have been the first the following year at the brand new Ed White Junior High School.  I had played an active part in determining the name of its football team.  For the first time in my life, I was looking forward to the new school year, to being in the first class in the new school named for an astronaut lost in a tragic accident, to belonging, having a place among my friends, being, if not popular, at least visible.

We were leaving a great house and moving into a much smaller one, where all four of us girls would have to share one bedroom.  Packing up my room this time had brought many tears.  My Davy Jones poster tore when I pulled it off the wall.  The rip in Davy's face was irreparable.  Bobby Sherman survived with only torn corners, but he would never be the same.  Mama decreed that my top dresser drawer full of all the TV Guides we'd ever owned be emptied and tossed.  We would need the space for clothes once we got into the smaller house.  Those TV Guides were my memories; I had read each one cover to cover and cherished them all.  Only eating could alleviate my despair, and I gained five pounds within a couple of weeks.  My bikini went into a box never again to see the light of day.

Will was at the house on moving day, and he hung around, silent, head down, following me awkwardly as I did the necessary chores of leaving a house.  At the last minute, the two of us alone in an echoing room, he wrapped his arms clumsily around me, gave me my first kiss, and ran out the door.  I should have been elated.  I should have shouted for joy and wrapped my arms around my body, eyes closed, smiling widely.  I should have done the Liesl-in-the-gazebo "wheeeeeeeee!" from the Sound of Music.

But I could do nothing except cry.  I knew I'd never see him again.

The long side window of the station wagon framed the landscape that flew by in a haze of tears.  Farms, cotton fields, billboards, tiny towns, barns proudly urging us to SEE ROCK CITY.  Welcome to Tennessee, a large sign at the roadside announced, and I cried harder, my tears falling onto Poocat's thick orange fur.

Some time passed and the chatter from the front of the car died down.  My younger siblings were probably sleeping, and Free Spirit most likely had her nose buried in a book.  Fields of hay, tobacco, and corn had replaced the beloved cotton fields of Alabama, the sky had clouded, and suddenly...

I saw the tree.

It was standing in a huge field, quite alone, branches morosely almost dragging the ground around it.  Nothing else for acres and acres...only this large oak tree, sad and lonely.  Its branches didn't sway with the wind; it simply stood, literally rooted to its place on earth, too despondent to manage even a wave of a leaf.  Like a drab unfinished painting, it stood waiting for the artist to add a bit of sunlight filtering through the clouds, to touch its branches and trunk with gold.  But there was no artist.  The tree was alone, and I felt keenly for it, even in my own despair.

I watched until it was no longer within sight, until the window framed another blurred landscape, and then I cried not only for myself, but also for that sad, lonely tree.

Memphis was a wretched experience, as were the next move and the next.  At last, when I was in tenth grade, we stayed in one house, in one city, long enough for me to make a handful of friends and finish my last years in the same school.  And shortly after graduation, I met Fred.

We dated for several years before marrying, and two years later, pregnant with Ariel, I found myself traveling that same road that had taken me from Huntsville to Memphis.  "The tree," I'd told Fred many times, "you have to see this poor tree."  I watched out my window frame for almost two hours, and when I was almost ready to give up, there it was.

But...this couldn't be the same tree.  The tree I remembered was dark, gloomy, sad, totally alone in those many acres of hay.  This tree...this tree just couldn't be the same...

But it was.  The image had been burned into my mind for all those years, and I remembered the size and shape, the placement in the field, the silo far off in the distance. 

Rounded on top, branches heavy with bright green leaves, the huge old oak stood proud and tall and commanded the fields below and around; it was majestic, magnificent, a thing of undeniable beauty.  It was incomparable; never before had I seen anything quite so grand.  A resplendent painting in the window frame of a Chevy Vega.

I watched until it was no longer in sight, closed my eyes, felt for Fred's hand, and laid the other gently across the baby moving inside me.