Blog Post 3

Memory is a funny thing. I can remember what I paid in rent every month for my last four apartments. I still remember every turn of courses from high school cross-country races. I can picture the look my dog gives me every time I accidentally use the word “walk” in my daily conversations around her. I wonder how my mind decides what to remember and what to forget.

I can’t picture the tree in my backyard with leaves on it in the summer. I know they were there. I specifically remember them almost lighting on fire with the tiki torch we had lit underneath it on the Fourth of July. I don’t remember what they looked like though.

I spent a lot of time looking up leaf shapes online. Were they cordate or elliptic? Oblong, ovate, lanceolate? They all blended together in my mind. Reading the technical terms while staring at the different shapes didn’t do anything for me. If I could remember, it might be easier to figure out what kind of tree it is. With it’s bare branches, different than its original trunk, it is difficult to tell.

It is especially difficult to picture these branches, thin and fragile, holding any other form of life on them. They look as if they would sink towards the ground with even the lightest of leaves growing from them. I remember a full tree in its place, but it isn’t clear to me. It’s like a blurry green cloud rising above my fence.

What I do know is that the tree was full enough that I never noticed how the branches were forming from the old cut down trunk. When it was green, it blended in with every other tree. It was as if no one ever caused any damage to it.