Tree of Life

Before my daughter was a woman, before she told me she resented me for living in fear, before she reached her limit of living at home and moved abroad, before she told me no one would ever live up to my standards and I would always be disappointed by everyone I ever met, and that I would always meet failure if I expected the worst from the beginning, she gave me a necklace.

It’s a circular glass pendant with the delicate form of a tree in the center, a dark green sheen of grass beyond the snaking brown roots and a translucent milky blue sky framing the swirling branches. The leaves themselves are curled and mint green, like tiny chlorophytic cinnamon rolls nestled tightly together. The Tree of Life, the cardboard insert in the velvet box proclaimed it to be. Or at least I think it did. It’s been so long ago now. I can’t be certain. It’s possible I filled in this gap myself.

The chain is fine, and gold. I’ve had it repaired more times than I can count. The lobster claw clasp is fiddly and always has been, but it’s noticeably harder to get secured these days. I can no longer reach my hands behind my head and do it without looking. I have to put it on backwards, and watch my mirror-self gingerly pull back on the trigger so that the gate opens, ease the hook over the ring, and release. Sometimes I don’t get it on the first try. Sometimes I have to try again, until the necklace is secure, and I know it won’t fall off and into the street.

I dropped the necklace recently, onto the countertop, when I was trying to secure it, and my heart fell through a hole in my chest imagining the glass shattering, little blue and brown and green pieces skittering across the worn surface, irreparable and too spread thin to mend. The tree’s trunk fractured, osteoporotic; the snaking spider-vein hairline faultlines separating sky from sky and ground from ground and root from branching leaf-rolls; the perfect circle split and spilling, centrifugal, away from center.

That didn’t happen, though. When my heart rate slowed and air returned to my lungs, I saw that the pendant was still in one piece, tree just as green, sky just as blue, not a crack in the world, having come to rest just by the edge of the cream-colored set-in sink. I hung in the air outside myself as I cried hysterically, gripping the edge of the sink until my knuckles drained of color. I watched all this with a curious remove. How I shook with equal parts terror and relief when I realized that the necklace was not, in fact, broken. Terror at the possibility of its breaking; relief at the understanding that it was sturdy enough to withstand the fall.

When my daughter was seven, just after she gave me the necklace, she fell out of a tree. It was a big sycamore, down by the creek. We had walked down from the house, as we did sometimes in the summer, for a rock-hop along the watercourse and to the park with the playground she loved. I turned my back for a moment, and when I looked again, there she was, hanging on to the branch that lay horizontal across the surface of the shallow water. I didn’t even have time to think, let alone scream. I saw her face open with delight, smile wide and wondering, no doubt locked on a fish or crawdad in the water below, or else animated by her own aliveness as she floated suspended in the air above. And then—I don’t know. I can’t remember how it happened, but she was suddenly falling, and she was in the water. Just like that. One, then two. First above, then below. First here, and then not. Displaced, moved.

I ran as well as I could over to her, tripping on rocks, splashing, disturbing the bottom-dwellers and rippling muddy sediments to the surface. I saw her not as a person but as a heap of wet clothes and hair, and I with my tragedy-bent mind immediately assumed the worst, as she would later accuse me, correctly, of always doing. I pictured her unmoving and cold, broken and shattered, blue lips, eyes open and unseeing, blood flowing downstream with the minnows and salamanders unaware of the carnage that caused the color change. I felt my daughter dead before I saw her. Frigid and immobile behind glass, cracked.

That didn’t happen, though. By the time I had reached her, she was sitting up in the creek, soaking wet, holding her head and laughing. I clutched her to me and felt all her pieces whole and unfractured. Are you okay? I half-whispered and half-sobbed, inspecting all her limbs, her soft arms, her small fingers, her knees, which—though constantly bruised and scraped—were still intact. The air returned to my lungs. My heart slowed its hammering.

And then I stood up and screamed at her. What do you think you were doing, I said, and Did you even stop to think for a second what would happen to me if something happened to you? My voice echoed shrilly off the rocks and trunks and hillsides. Me. Me. Me. You. You. You. My existence tied, tethered, dependent on hers. And she was just sitting there, wide eyed, still laughing, uncomprehending of my torment. Completely unaware of the pain rending the muscles of my heart apart. Her face fell as she took in my expression. Mom, I’m okay, she said. But you might not have been, I screeched in reply.

I watched my body unable to wrap itself around the horror of the might-have-been. I watched as I pulled my arm back and watched as I tried and failed to stop myself from moving and watched as my hand made contact with my daughter’s laugh-red cheek and watched as it immediately drew back in revulsion. Watched as tears filled her widening eyes, her hand springing to her smarting face. Watched as she stood, and ran away from me, out of the creek and up the steep bank and back towards home.

And that was the beginning of her turning away. That was the threshold of her doorway of leaving. I can’t blame her, if I’m being honest. She told me she didn’t want to live a life defined by fear, like I had. She told me I would never be happy because I always expected too much from people. She told me that I had to stop clinging so hard to everything. She’s right. But I can’t stop. The glass will always shatter. The girl will always drop from the branch. The daughter will always get on a plane, and leave. And I can do nothing to stop it.