Can an oak tree smile?

My parents built their home on a wooded hillside, in the newly-founded town of Tivon (House of Nature).  They placed the house under the shade of an old oak tree which they loved and respected.  For my brother Gini and me, the tree was a dear childhood friend, yet as we matured, it slowly receded from our lives.  After my parents’ death, Gini moved into the house, and family life shifted away from the tree, and to the air-conditioned living room.  The old oak became an unobserved presence.  On my infrequent visits to Tivon, I would walk beside it without taking notice.  Until a story told by a neighbor prompted me to visit my giant friend.

I approached the tree, and to my surprise, despite the many years that passed, it still boasted the same healthy canopy that I held in my memories. Irrationally, I expected the tree to decline in parallel to my own aging body.  I walked around it, and casually rested my hand on its thick trunk.  An oak tree is not pleasant to the touch.  The deeply corrugated bark is hard, and the ridges are as sharp as a knife.  Yet as I touched the rough surface, childhood memories flooded my consciousness.  Usually, I need Gini to help me recreate past events.  Now, I could clearly see myself as a young boy, leaning my arms against the tree trunk.  I could sense the tough bark biting into my skin while, with my eyes tightly shut, I was loudly counting to ten.  The other kids were scrambling to find a hiding spot.  I felt the anticipation of the hunt as I set out to search for my concealed friends.

If trees like company, summer was the oak’s best season.   Friends would come over, and the lawn under its wide protective shade became the stage for our imagination.  The tree itself was an active participant in our games.  We played Hide and Seek, Cowboys and Indians, and many other adventures of our own invention.  During the summer our relatives would come to Tivon to seek refuge from the heat and humidity of Tel Aviv.  Suddenly, my stomach cramped with guilt as I remembered my cousin Neta, a girl my age.  It was here on this lawn that, in a moment of childish anger, I punched her in the stomach.  I was shocked as she doubled-over with pain.  Eventually, she stopped crying, and we resumed our play, but the sensation in my gut persisted for several days.  Summer must have been the setting for my first SMB experience.  As told by Pnina, our next door neighbor, in a voice that was an intriguing mixture of reproach and delight, Gini and I tied her to the tree and turned the sprinkler on.  The tree had company all day long.  On summer evenings, when the house was still too hot for comfort, my mother would set up a table under a bare bulb which hung from a horizontal branch.  Insects of all shapes gathered around that bulb, while my father carefully diced vegetables, ripened to perfection in his garden.  He would then add salt and oil to prepare the salad we all craved.

I looked up and recalled the dozens, maybe hundreds of times I climbed this tree.  I climbed it for thrill, for solitude, but mainly, to live my dream of becoming a pilot.  I climbed high, to where the branches were barely thick enough to support my weight.  There, a forking branch provided a comfortable seat, two extrusions acted as foot pedals, and as if by design, a vertical branch extended between my thighs to serve as a control stick.  With blue sky directly above, the ground, obscured by the foliage below, and a deep valley in front, I was flying.  The breeze swayed the thin branches in exact response to my aileron commands as I engaged a German Messerschmitt in a fierce dogfight.  In later years, I upgraded from the Spitfire into the Mystere jet, and the arena moved from the skies over Britain to the Sinai.  I did not become an air force pilot, and the tree would remain unclimbed, until it was discovered by my physically-gifted son Ofer.  From an early age, to the horror of my father, he would scramble effortlessly up the tree, and disappear from sight.  Worse still, he would come down swinging Tarzan-style from limb to limb.  Inevitably, he grew up, and the tree remained alone again.

Now, fifty years later, neuro-muscular synapses re-formed, and I could feel my body tensing in sync with the movements required to climb the tree.  Hop, pull up, bare foot there, twist, swing, and reaching the first fork, take a rest.  After the difficult first stage, it was only a matter of a careful ladder-like climb to the top.  My body craved to climb the tree, yet the thin skin on my hands and feet, cringed at the thought of scraping against the rough bark.  I also noticed that the lowest horizontal branch, which served as the launching point for the climb, was missing.  I suspect that my father sawed it off, in a futile attempt to deter his agile grandson from endangering his life.  I did not climb.  Instead, I told my story to Yair, Gini’s son.  He was energized, and being taller and younger, he promptly made his way up.

From above, Yair smiled triumphantly, and I could swear that the oak tree was smiling too.