What the Oak Tree Said, Part I

Limbs of a Beautiful Live Oak Tree
Originally uploaded by annjaber74

I promised to mention what the oak tree said. “This week,” I believe I promised.

So, He said three things:

1.     Blog every day.

2.     Paint me.

3.     Talk about the frog dream.

I was at the top of an egg-shaped mountain. I was underneath the dome of a very old, very large live oak tree. They are called live oaks because they are evergreen and, like everything else that lives in that landscape, they are hardened to heat. The limbs are cracked black iron and the lower ones are like a layer of snakes swimming up and then down in every direction, buttresses so that the dream of the tree can be really, really big.

And, it seemed to me for those two sunny days in the toast-colored hills of Napa, they have little use for stalling.

So I’m trying to get on with it.

Now, with regard to number 1: I had dinner with some old friends on Saturday night, one of whom said “there’s nothing worse than a ritual that makes you feel trapped.” At least, I think that’s what he said. It’s a little blurry. I remember this, though: he went on to say that he has his own ritual. That he goes in to see both his little boys, pulls their blankets up over them as they sleep, every night before he goes to bed.

This is what a ritual should be like. It should feel important AND good.

Writing does that for me. Almost every day.

So number one: check.

I started on the painting too. I can see it perfectly: Murals of the branching, reaching canopy of a live oak on my kitchen and living room walls. Yesterday, our friends John and Corry sat in the living room after a fabulous late lunch that sampled their recent trip to Italy. And it just came over me. I got up, grabbed a stick of charcoal and starting climbing the couches to sketch on the walls. John moved off of the loveseat to make way and the Fox said “Mommy’s drawing!”

Number three, though. The frogs. Whew. This is the hard one. It is a scary dream in both of the ways that dreams are measured.

(One way is what happens if the dream succeeds. Is it big? Are you willing to be that big too? The other way is what happens if the dream fails.)

But, these are good things to face in the arms of a tree. I may have mentioned before my feeling of God in the trees. Especially, as it turns out, in a very old live oak tree with twisting black limbs and emerald leaves which spun a dome all the way down to the ground and was filled with caterpillars that flew from limb to limb on silken threads like flying Wallendas just before rebirth. I don’t want to overstate things, but that’s what we were there for. Falling and flying.  And isn’t that what the resurrection of a dream is? Rebirth?

We thought we were there for a quick hike before going wine tasting...