Trees are life… Literally.
I think a lot about how without trees and other plants we would not be able to exist. It’s the trees that help create oxygen, and gladly accept the carbon dioxide we spew into the atmosphere.
Silent guardians standing steadfast, trees have this sense of mysticism to them. This sense of goodness. This sense of bliss. Trees are pure.
I’ve always loved the trees, even when they haven’t loved me back (I have severe allergies to anything nature oriented!).
What makes a tree truly special?
All of the trees are special because all of them have their own story. If you listen to the trees they might just tell you their story.
But what makes a tree special to us?
My earliest memories of the trees stem from very early memories, when I was three, four, or five years old at my grandparents house.
Growing up in a trailer park, we didn’t have any trees around. Our yard was big enough for a picnic table, flowerbed, and wooden swing set, as well as the porch that was built off our trailer by our grandfather. He also built the aforementioned picnic table.
It wasn’t until I was 9 and we had moved to our first house, where I actually had trees in my yard. Trees that provided shelter from the sun. Trees that would allow me to play endlessly with neighborhood kids and other friends.
A photo of young Dom sitting on some green carpeted porch steps. There are two dogs on each side of them. On the left, a White Poodle is giving Dom a kiss.
By the time I was 9 I was unable to really play in the trees the way I had when I was younger.
So, the memory of special trees really comes down to when I was about five or six years old and I would play in the trees that lined my grandparents’ section of Rohr Dr., the West Toledo street where my grandparents lived.
My grandparents lived on the second block of Rohr, between two major streets – Monroe Street and Sylvania Avenue. It was an ideal place to grow up for my mother and her two siblings, and still quite safe in the 1980s and 90s when my brother and I spent a lot of time there.
I would say before I was 10, I spent probably at least half of my time on Rohr Dr., but with steps I eventually could no longer get inside my grandparents home.
My grandparents lived three houses down from the corner of the cross street Portsmouth Avenue. Their block was a mix of young families with kids a little younger or the same age as my brother and I, and elders like my grandparents.
On their specific side of the street before you got to their house there was half a sidewalk that went down to Portsmouth and ended at my grandparents driveway. My brother, cousins and I would spend endless hours driving up and down that sidewalk in our big wheels.
In front of each of the first three houses was a humongous tree. I know nothing about trees, but I assume they were all oak trees.
The one in front of my grandparents house was not easy to play in. You would have to climb up it, and that was not anything my brother was willing to do nor anything I could do.
We called my grandparents’ next door neighbor, an elderly woman who had never been married to my knowledge, Aunt Betty Boop. She loved children and would invite us over for snacks. She especially loved me and she had multiple dogs that would always attack me with kisses and love.
My mother would constantly yell at me to not bother her but she would call to us to play in her driveway which we would turn into a makeshift McDonald’s drive thru. Her driveway was separated by a center grass beam so we would go up one side of the driveway to give our order and then down the other side of the driveway like we were receiving our order.
Such great fun we would have as Aunt Betty would shush our parents about bothering her. She got great joy in spoiling us until her death a few years later.
In front of her house was another large tree that was split in the middle and we would sometimes get in between the branches and play.
However, it was the third house that had the best tree to play within. You could climb up inside the tree and stand between three merged trunks. We would play secret spies and that would be our hiding place or the place where we changed into our costumes to become superheroes!
Whatever we needed that tree for was only limited by the constraints of our imagination.
A picture of young Dom, sitting on their grandpa Willie’s lap. They are on the porch on Rohr Dr. in a lawn chair.
Of all the grandchildren, I spent the most time with my grandparents.
When I was in kindergarten and before, I was at their house every week.
My grandparents would pick me up from preschool and daycare and drive me home or drive me to their house and keep me for my dad to pick me up on his way home from work. During the days when I stayed with them I would play outside quite a bit – telling my own stories and playing my own games, just me and the trees!
After I started going to school full-time I spent less time at my grandparents’ house. As I got older and had more mobility needs, they would come over to our house more as it was more accessible than theirs.
When I was a preteen they cut down the first tree. It was the one in front of Aunt Betty’s house.
I was horrified. The tree was dead, so they said, so it had to come down but nothing replaced it. If you look at Google Maps the area where the tree once stood remains empty to this day.
Heartbroken at the loss of one of the trees of my youth, I forced myself to walk down to the last tree. The one we always played in. I wasn’t walking as well. I was probably about 10 or 11 and it was quite a trek to get to that third tree.
When I was little there was a large space within its branches. Older, bigger, and with less mobility I struggled to climb within their once soothing bark-y exterior.
Climbing into the tree was quite an endeavor, this time. I nearly tripped over the imperfect curve of the interior of the tree. I was nervous getting inside the tree for the first time. My body was betraying me and this was not an easy thing to do.
I clung to the bark, running my hands over it to hold myself steady. Once soothing, the tree was now hard and unforgiving. It was as if an era had been lost. The tree was reminding me that my time with the trees was over.
I don’t know how, but I managed to slide out of the tree again. No one in my family knew. My grandparents in the house watching television and me teetering on wobbly legs back to sit on the porch I had left to go pursue the trees.
My grandfather called me to tell me they cut the tree down some years later.
I didn’t go to see it.
I didn’t want to see the last remnant of the tree gone. I was a teenager by then and I wasn’t climbing trees anyway. I was unable to stand up much at all anymore. My time with the trees was nothing but a memory.
Years later, after I started using a wheelchair, as my family visited my grandparents, and I sat outside their inaccessible home, I drove down to that spot where there was once a tree.
They eventually planted a tree there. A skinny maple tree not nearly as tall, and one that no children could really climb within. It’s not even in the same spot as the old oak tree. If you look at a map, that tree still remains.
When I was older, maybe in college, I can’t remember when my grandfather called to let me know that they were going to have to cut down the third tree – the one in front of their house.
Though I had never been able to climb within that tree it was still a part of the trio of trees. It always still had been a magical part of my younger years – a reminder of the good old days when my cousins and I would play and pretend we had a drive thru restaurant of our own.
I think my grandfather was sad that they had to get rid of the tree as well. Gone was a bastion of my younger years.
All that remains are my memories of the trees. Memories I will never forget.
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