Weafine

Thoughts | Hannah Weinberg

Graphic by Alex Eun.

The girls called me “Weafine”, I believe. I always felt that the name was unnecessary, but I never had the heart to tell them. Why does a tree need a name when my roots anchor me in soft earth, when my leaves absorb light during the dry seasons, when I define myself each day by reaching towards the sky? But if this name helped the girls to connect to me, then I am glad to have borne it. It has been years since they last visited me, but I still remember those days fondly…

The air was chilly, but the light was warm and bright on my serrated, tear-dropped leaves. I recall feeling ill, uncertain, disoriented. Before that moment, all I had known was weak, consistent light and the confines of plastic; suddenly, I knew movement and then earth. I was planted in a field of soft grass — to the distance, taller trees and, even farther, the playground of an elementary school in Ashland, Oregon. 

Hannah and Lilian noticed right away that I was the smallest tree on the field. I wonder if that is why they chose me as their project, sympathizing with this lone figure at recess, devoid of companionship. During recess, they would fly out of their open classroom door, darting around classmates, jumping over brick retaining walls, weaving through metal play structures, and kicking up bark chips with their light-up sneakers. As they ran, they left the numbers, figures, and words of the morning in their dust. They shed layers of civility from their sweaters, grammar peeling out of their pigtails, cursive melting from their shoelaces as they sped onto soft grass. 

My domain marked the borderlands of their imagination. They always began with a check-up, examining my leaves, branches, and trunk with careful, probing fingertips. It never felt like much, but I remember how they would pick bugs out of my bark, relocating them in the blackberry bushes on the edge of the field. I grew accustomed to their attention, looking forward to their conversations just as I awaited vigorous breezes, cleansing rains, and hot, delicious days. 

They were delighted when I began to produce the fuzzy buds that would one day blossom and flower. They plucked a few, holding the nubs aloft in a scrutinous pinch, exclaiming at the wonder of spring. They played with these creations and pretended they held little animals. The girls would lie on their backs, and squint up at the sky, holding these furred buds in the foreground of fluffy white clouds. They would play and play, waving these objects through the air like little sheep, hopping and bleating with the dedication of an ewe. Released from the confines of the school, they found peace outdoors with good, kind, Weafine. I believe they decided on my name because I bore leaves (hence, ‘Weaf’) and was a female tree (hence, ‘ine’). Of course, they merely imagined this gender onto me, but I could say the same about them and their people. 

We all stood at the same height when we first became friends, but after a summer of growth, I loomed over their small forms. And I had grown a surprise. Over these months away, I had twisted my roots in just a way that I held a little alcove near the earth. They found it immediately and my shadow had only lengthened by the length of a shrew by the time they had constructed a little shelter from this hole. Leaves, twigs, and buds, some of which were my own, created miniscule beds and pillows, tables, chairs, and a door. Apparently they had used my root structure to make a fairy home. 

Whenever the grumbling machine of an industrial lawn-mower groomed the grounds, Hannah and Lilian were beside themselves with worry. They cast themselves on the grass before me, terrified that my trunk would be lopped in two. Their fear was unnecessary, but sweet. I had known nothing until being planted, but even I knew that I bore no risk of beheading. I was serving my purpose, as art, as protector, as friend. To the humans, I was succeeding. But my years passed slowly, and as the girls began to visit me less and less, I dedicated my energy into spreading the tips of my roots, searching for connection. 

Years later, Weafine ceases to exist, but I continue to expand outwards. Maybe I will see them again. We shall see.