The Roots I Come From

Where do you end, and what you were given begins?

My great-grandmother planted the tree

before I knew what could be inherited.

A walnut tree -

unyielding, devout,

growing like a tower

standing guard before the house.

My grandfather, still young then,

built a bench beneath it,

and a swing nearby.

We used to fly there -

my siblings and I -

pushing higher, higher,

until our feet brushed the leaves.

In the afternoons

it held the sun away from us,

casting a cool shade,

easing the weight of the heat.

I loved it

without asking why.

Years later,

I stood beside it with a shovel in my hands.

The trunk was hollowing -

more and more from within.

But the branches held,

the roots held.

It was not dead.

Only no longer safe

to keep standing -

or so we believed.

The trunk stood as it always had.

It was the ground

that had to be opened.

I dug

for days

until the roots revealed themselves -

thick,

entangled,

spreading farther than I expected,

reaching beneath the house itself,

holding everything in place.

And I cut through them,

one by one.

With every strike

I thought of her -

the way she endured years

that taught her not to bend,

how survival

hardens into certainty.

They carried it forward -

through him,

through my mother -

this quiet insistence

that things must remain

as they have always been,

as if what was given

was sacred and final.

And somewhere in that lineage,

I found it in myself.

There were moments

I wished to be like those roots -

certain,

unquestioning,

held in place

by something older than me.

It would have been easier

to grow in one direction only.

But every time I tried,

something in me resisted -

as if turning away from myself

would set my blood to burning

and tear my heart from its roots.

I did not dig

for what was above the ground.

I dug

for what kept growing beneath us

without being named.

For the rules

that took root before I could question them.

For the certainty

that their way

was the only way.

For the voice

that asked me to become

what I was never meant to be.

For everything planted in me

before I knew

I could choose otherwise.

They loved me -

in the only way they knew.

They believed

in what had shaped them.

And I learned

to see it,

to carry it with care -

but not to become it.

When the roots loosened,

he tied a rope around the trunk

and pulled.

The tree resisted -

until it didn’t.

And I wondered,

as it fell -

if she would recognize me

in the one who helped bring it down,

or only in what refused

to remain the same.

When it was done,

we saw it clearly -

it would have never fallen.

Not in a storm,

not in the strongest wind.

The roots were too deep -

made to endure,

not to yield.

The tree is gone.

But its thick roots

still rest,

nourished

by the ground

that raised me.

And I walk that ground

freely now -

knowing I do not have to become

what holds everything in place

to belong to it.

I will grow my own tree -

from the roots that shaped me,

but do not bind me -

strong enough to stand,

gentle enough

not to break

what grows from it.