Under the Birch Tree

by Nancy Chadwick

  The changes and moves in my life had all presented opportunities. In the past when I thought I had found home, I had questioned whether it was just a settling place in disguise, only to reveal a change in time, telling me to move elsewhere. And this struggle to feel settled had perpetuated a lack of trust in my future.

  Now that I was thirty-five, instead of living my days in the past, as if I were treading on rice paper, I let go. I released what I could not control and diverted my energy to the present, the many times I acknowledged my place, recognizing home through connections of person and place, sound and sight, because it was where I belonged. I had journeyed through the decades trying to seek a way of life I believed I was supposed to have.

  Places that shaped me held my stories within the larger picture of my history. Each of those places held a piece of who I am today. My familiar became where I was, the sum of the parts of my life I had experienced and pieced together from my first start on Carlisle Street, where under the birch tree was truly my first home.

  I discovered this quote by German-Swiss poet Hermann Hesse when I began to write this memoir. His words, flowing from tree to God to home, are a sum of my emotions:

  For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone … In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there … Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.

  Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

  A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy.

  Out of this trust I live.

  Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

  He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

  My birch buddy was my sanctuary. As a young girl, I admired its white papery skin peeling and curling like no other tree in my yard. Its delicate leaves, hanging like slender earrings from twiggy branches, boasted shiny green in summer’s health and shriveled brown in fall’s hibernation. It was protection from too much sun in summer and allowed a winter’s sun to warm me. My special tree was shelter, providing safety from roots to tallest limb, to newborn bunnies.

  With every birch tree sighting, a deep breath followed, and in my breath of life, I reaffirmed that everything was going to be all right, that God wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me—and he didn’t. I trusted.

  My home was indeed always with me, as I overcame obstacles and always found a birch tree in the distance. Or did a birch buddy instead find me?

  There was something centering, grounded, and calm about knowing I was home.

  And standing next to my birch buddy, under the stillness of the leaves overhead and enveloping branches at my side, I would always be centered, grounded, and calm.

  epilogue

  And so we had our 1947 cottage-style, two-bedroom house in the northern suburbs of Chicago on a heavily tree-lined private road a year after we married. As my husband and I drove home one summer afternoon from Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, I was mesmerized by the lake to my right. The blanket of sunshine turned the water a deep blue with rhythmic waves playing and bumping against the rocks. I missed those days upon my return to the city when I ran along the lakeshore from our apartment on Huron, across Michigan Avenue, down Chicago Avenue to the pedway with lightness in my steps, greeting sunlight, to Lake Michigan. With every curve and distance traveled, I embraced a different perspective, not only on the city but also on me.

  I reminisced about the intermissions I’d had in my life, the intervals between periods of development and the paths I had chosen. There was my pause on the steps of the J-school after I completed my last final exam, college graduation when I stayed in Milwaukee, the break from looking for a job once I moved to my mother’s, sitting on the hill at Montrose Harbor in Chicago before I left for San Francisco, parked at my temporary apartment when I moved back from San Francisco—to name just a few interludes. The breaks in time allowed me to reflect and offered a chance for me to organize, recharge, and move forward, determined to get where I wanted to be. Perhaps it was my way of liberating my emotions to muster a strong will to get me on my way once again, to connect me to the other side, where my sense of worth and identity would have miles yet to travel. I was reminded I would not take the present moments for granted and, in a larger perspective, take nothing about my life for granted. Through the decades, I was finding the person I was meant to be and defining myself through others or through my surroundings. I learned lessons in difficult ways, but in the outcome, God never did let anything bad happen to me.

  I will remember when Mom, Tim, and I were together and connected in every sense of home. It was September, just after a rehearsal dinner before my wedding, and a warm breeze off the lake matched the evening’s temperature. We started walking with the wind at our backs and ended at an unlikely place, a couple of blocks east of Michigan Avenue on the corner of Chicago and Huron. We had stopped and loitered on the corner in front of the White Hen when time seemed to have stood still. All of us were talking at the same time, sharing stories from when Tim and I were young, and Mom filling in the gaps of our memories. We had been apart for so long, living separate existences, making decisions without the benefits of family guidance or support. But here we were together, not feeling the many years we had lived separately but now living years in unison. Our continuous laughter was the familiar. I don’t remember what sustained the humor, but I do remember Mom had stopped first on the corner in a fit of gut-tightening silliness. Tim and I followed, bumbling along, drunk on the spontaneous laughter.

  For that short time, the three of us had an unspoken bond where our early years of growing up were exposed. We had grown up. I was getting married. Tim would soon follow. Mom continued to be alone, but I was back in the city, a place of history and memories from long ago for Mom, a foreign land for Tim. It was an unlikely gathering where we weren’t alone, but together, laughing the past away and enjoying the present moments of each other.

  I wish for a more perfect world in which my brother and I are closer; he is not far away but has a life a great distance from mine. I hope my mother finds happiness and acceptance of herself. But my wishes are private, and I believe that someday their hopes will come true. I remember the struggles of my twenties and the triumphs and joys in my thirties. Now that I have finished my forties, a new-found wisdom flushes over me that says I would never have changed anything in my life. I am what I am today because of the decades past, the connections made and broken and then reformed in person and place.

  My house now is a stop along the way to learning lessons that were destined for me. I have painted walls and drawn pictures, baked goods and sewn curtains, turned someone else’s house into my home with my thoughts and my learned lessons bound within four walls. My world is my home in all that I’ve learned.

  I am dictating these words from a perch overlooking a valley reminiscent of days spent in Anderson Valley, California, where vineyards unfurl along hillsides in Mendocino. The air is still and damp with the sun bleeding through a morning calm awakening every creature. Stately trees surround me, and my eyes wander as though in a maze, starting at the center, through twists and turns, working my way out to freedom. There is nothing more comforting than to see the tall birch tree through my window. I look through the framed glass, capturing every detail as my eyes embrace the peeling white bark, the hummingbirds hovering over the tips of the flower bed, the sparkling dewy grass growing as fast as the eye can
witness, and the dark shadows cast from divots in the lawn. Squirrels trapeze from tree to tree, connecting dots and creating sharp angles with every leap they make. The rabbits stir with their mother keeping watch, and the bunny brood peeks slowly out of their nest in the hole within the surrounding curb of the birch tree. They are still so as not to attract attention. I watch and then continue with my work, soon to tire as my thoughts drift. A final glance through my window shows the bunnies scampering to new places and new homes in freedom. They go untouched and are left alone where their mother and nest is left behind. The seasons dawn, the decades come to an end, and the bunnies are forced out of their home before their time but bound for great things and new adventures.

  When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter.

  —Mark Twain: A Biography

  acknowledgments

  I had autobiography; I wanted memoir.

  Fifteen years ago, I started writing a story that was more chronology filled with events and less complete with experiences of reflections and takeaways. I avoided working those pages, throwing the manuscript into a drawer and hoping the time for incubation would turn it around but neither the book’s resting place nor its gestation resulted in my favor. My manuscript and I were stuck. In 2005, I threw caution to the wind and submitted the bundle to a professional for its first, virginal critique. My thanks to John M. Daniel for giving me the most thorough editorial analysis that became the backbone and impetus to my future rewrites. Three years later and more rewrites, I needed to see if I was on the right track–steering away from autobiography.

  Thank you, Marcia Trahan, for providing your first manuscript critique summary in 2008 telling me I needed to engage my reader and write a story that answers the question of “who cares?” The answer to this guided me through every subsequent rewrite. I had seen my progress toward my memoir goal when your subsequent critique of 2013 blessed me with your words saying I, indeed, had a story. But I still had a way to go before I could claim my story a memoir.

  After intensive self-study on the craft of writing memoir and rewriting my manuscript, I turned to Brooke Warner for help. Thank you, Brooke, for leading me to develop strong memoir, for pulling me back from straying from my theme and showing me how to mend my splintered through-threads with a solid critique granting me my “aha” moments. Your suggestion for a developmental edit with Annie Tucker broke the gates that were holding me back from discovering the memoir it was meant to be. Thanks, Annie, for your embedded questions, prompting me to think and to answer as a memoir writer.

  And with sincere gratitude, I thank my project manager, Cait Levin, for working your magic during the book-making process and the entire team at She Writes Press for accepting Under the Birch Tree.

  I got my memoir!

  A special thank you to my husband, Mike, who knew all along I had something to say, who was patient and supportive in pursuing my journey, this dream, of one day publishing my book and sharing it with those who also seek to discover connections, their place to be, to find their home.

  about the author

  NANCY CHADWICK grew up in a north suburb of Chicago. After receiving a Journalism degree at Marquette University, she got her first job at Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago. After ten years there, she couldn’t get to where she wanted to be in the ad agency business, so she reinvented herself and turned to the banking industry. Then, after another ten years, she realized she wasn’t a banker—so she quit and started to write, finding inspiration from her years in Chicago and San Francisco. Her essay “I Called You a Memoir” appears in The Magic of Memoir, Inspiration for the Writing Journey. She and her husband enjoy traveling, cooking fine dinners, and chasing their beagles in circles.

  www.nancychadwickauthor.com

  Author photo © Cassandra Rodgers

  selected titles from she writes press

  She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere.

  Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.

  The Sportscaster’s Daughter: A Memoir by Cindi Michael. $16.95, 978-1-63152-107-2. Despite being disowned by her father—sportscaster George Michael, said to be the man who inspired ESPN’s SportsCenter—Cindi Michael manages financially and heals emotionally, ultimately finding confidence from within.

  Blue Apple Switchback: A Memoir by Carrie Highley. $16.95, 978-1-63152-037-2. At age forty, Carrie Highley finally decided to take on the biggest switchback of her life: upon her bicycle, and with the help of her mentor’s wisdom, she shed everything she was taught to believe as a young lady growing up in the South—and made a choice to be true to herself and everyone else around her.

  Accidental Soldier: A Memoir of Service and Sacrifice in the Israel Defense Forces by Dorit Sasson. $17.95, 978-1-63152-035-8. When nineteen-year-old Dorit Sasson realized she had no choice but to distance herself from her neurotic, worrywart of a mother in order to become her own person, she volunteered for the Israel Defense Forces—and found her path to freedom.

  Rethinking Possible: A Memoir of Resilience by Rebecca Faye Smith Galli. $16.95, 978-1-63152-220-8. After her brother’s devastatingly young death tears her world apart, Becky Galli embarks upon a quest to recreate the sense of family she’s lost—and learns about healing and the transformational power of love over loss along the way.

  Veronica’s Grave: A Daughter’s Memoir by Barbara Bracht Donsky. $16.95, 978-1-63152-074-7. A loss and coming-of-age story that follows young Barbara Bracht as she struggles to comprehend the sudden disappearance and death of her mother and cope with a blue-collar father intent upon erasing her mother’s memory.