| #9
- The Tree and The Boy Who Was Afraid of the Wind
Gulin Akoz, Dec.
'01
To my ever best-friend whom I don’t see anymore
“Life is so,” God declared.
“But why?” she protested.
“This is the way it has to be. It’s going to be
painful.”
She was all alone in this barren but beautiful land where no
one had ever set foot yet. The shallow, blue-black water stretched
far beyond the horizon.
She couldn’t move. She felt like crying. But she couldn’t
do that either. She had no tears.
It took her a while but finally she accepted the fact that
here she was and there was nothing she could do about it. So
she started playing with her leaves, twisting and weaving her
branches into different shapes. She was amazed and amused to
see how fun this could be.
At night, the ripples in the lake reflected her shadow and
the moon. She wondered if the moon ever thought of resigning.
That would be too bad. But no, she knew the moon would always
be there to keep her company.
The next day she woke up to hear a blue bird singing, and the
following day a purple flower started to bud beneath her trunk.
When the flower finally opened up its petals she asked her name.
The flower answered “lavender.”
The blue bird would fly away and tell her the things she saw.
So she started learning about the world she couldn’t see
for herself. According to what the blue bird had recounted,
behind the sand dunes was a small village.
One day, a little boy came and sat beside her. She was surprised
and happy to see this new visitor. He was busy building a ship
with his legos when he sneezed. She instinctively said “Bless
you.” The boy looked up to see to whom this strange voice
belonged to. He said “Thank you.”
At that moment, she knew they had made friends. She could have
easily said “Let’s play,” and they would have
started playing together. But she chose to be quiet and said
nothing more. The knowledge of having one more friend sufficed.
She would let time take its course.
A voice echoed in the distance. His mother was calling the
little boy, “Alex, come over here. We’re leaving.”
Alex walked towards his mother. He glimpsed back and said “Bye.”
She replied with a smile. Only when he was too far away to hear
her, she could utter “Bye.”
It was a week before she saw him again. And from that day on,
every day he would come, sit by her and read his book for hours.
They both felt so peaceful. They shared the silence. They shared
the sound of the wind.
Sometimes she would ask something or he would say something
and they would have a long conversation without words.
Oh, they had fights as well. There were times she thought he
would never come back, but he always did.
So passed the years. Seasons changed the colors of her leaves
from green, to yellow, to red. Winter never failed to turn into
spring. The little boy grew up to be a handsome young man.
And one day he came to tell her he was going overseas to study.
He was so excited. She had known about this but had never thought
he would leave her. She did not know then how much he meant
to her and how much she would miss him when he was gone.
What’s one year in a lifetime? It also passed like the
others, although the days seemed to have become longer and lonelier.
He did not write any letters. He wanted it to be perfect. Even
if he had written where would he send it anyway? He had not
realized how attached he had become to her.
One night she dreamt she was surrounded by other trees, she
was in a forest. She also dreamt he was back. He had a red rose
in his hands and the wind whispered in her ear, “I love
you.”
In the morning, she opened her eyes… there was a red
rose lying on the ground.
She remembered the first rainbow she saw with a mixed feeling
of joy and sorrow. She had wanted to reach up and touch it…
her roots forbade her.
But now, she was free. |
