Uphill Process

This is a story I also told in church in El Kuda on April 6, 2019, while visiting the place I now call HOME.

In my early 20’s, stationed in Subic Bay, Philippines, I met a woman, Filipina, with whom a one night stand turned into many years of horrid marriage. She informed me, consistently, that I was not the man she loved and she only married me because she got pregnant, that I had taken advantage of her because she was drunk, though she wasn’t, which resulted her in marrying me. 20 years later, "I still hate you for what you did to me that night we met." My sister says she did it to come to the U.S. Whether I agree with my sister or not, is not the point.

As abusers often do, this woman made my life a living hell until we moved away from my family. Then it was hell, yet I got through it. We had 2 beautiful daughters, one of which now blames me for everything wrong in her life, and I have come to realize, that is fine. It IS okay, and I Love them both, regardless.

Some years before I woke up and realized I had to get OUT of this marriage, out of this mental and emotional abuse, I found myself ordering some plants online to spruce up the yard of the house we bought in Delaware. Though it was as far from my family as we could be, I would attempt to bring some semblance of life and joy into my reality. In the spring of 2002, I ordered some dormant red maple trees, two of them. Upon receiving them, I noticed one had almost no roots, the other was rootfull. I checked out the instructions which informed me it would take up to 3 weeks for growth to begin. Mind you, because they are dormant, they look like dead sticks planted in the ground.

I watered them regularly, a little bit of excitement with each time. Three weeks passed, then six, as the dead sticks did nothing but sit there, taking up the water. At one point, during a maintenance mowing session, the poor things being unmarked, were mowed down. “Wince”. One of them came out of the ground completely, roots and all, while the other stayed in the form of a two inch dead looking stick. I did continue watering it on occasion, yet had no real expectations.

Fall came, as it usually does, around the same time as years previous. On one occasion, I wandered around the yard, remembering the “dead stick” that had been mowed so many months previous, with the water hose. As I stepped up to it, pointing the hose unto the ground of which it was hibernating, or doing whatever it does, I was aghast in surprise and wonder! Here it was, an abused plant, ignored mostly, forgotten about except on few occasions, with a tiny, green sprouted thing growing from it! I kneeled onto the ground, pushing the hose away in excitement and anticipation, to get a closer look. YES! There was growth! I was filled with awe as this assumed dead thing showed signs of life! I stood, in my childlike abandon and in my best Dr. Frankenstein impression (which was not very good at all), yelled “It’s alive! It’s alive!” My heart soared within the life force, all my efforts, my few moments of giving this thought to be dead plant life, love and water, had come to fruition!

With this new life that I had somehow nurtured along, I kept closer track of it. Continuing excitement, this was my baby I had planted and somehow nurtured enough, I watched as it grew to be a few inches tall by winter.

On July 11, 2020, I was fortunate to revisit my old maple tree that I had planted years ago. Upon sight of it’s beauty and size, it was revealed to me that sometimes, something I thought was dead only needed time to grow it’s roots, get a good stronghold, then the form can manifest. Without good roots, it only takes one lawnmower to pull it out of the ground.