by Cory Kemp

Created on: June 06, 2008

God's Paper Cups

My mom sold our family home last year, the one in which I grew up, so when I make my visit this fall I will only be doing a drive-by visitation of the old homestead. Fortunately, the people who bought the house rehabbed it and had it posted on the web with a local realtor for a few months. That satisfied my curiosity about how the place looked, and it was pleasing to note how they had cared for it. Hopefully, whoever now lives there will love it. My hope, too, is that they will keep the lovely birch tree that has stood proudly in the front yard for over thirty-five years.

The property on which the house stands, while small, is standard for the neighborhood. What made it special for our family was the bounty my parents created, bringing in pear, apple and plum trees, as well as asparagus, raspberries, rhubarb and Concord grapes, all of which we enjoyed, each in their seasons of plenty. A summer garden grew green beans, onions, tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers. What we didn't eat fresh or share with friends was canned by my mother, something a lot of moms did then, even though the process has fallen out of fashion with my generation. I appreciated the plums and raspberries most.. I have also retrofitted my honor for the richness of the past with respect for what asparagus and rhubarb cost at my local market.

While I remember the whole of the backyard bounty with fondness, the trees did more than feed our bodies. They also fed our souls. What is better on a warm Wisconsin summer afternoon than to welcome a tree's imagination into your own, establishing a whole world within the boundaries of its shade and strong branches? Perhaps they were simpler times and often I think that is a good thing, at least for me. I'm glad I still have the memories because the trees and the gardens are now gone.

Which brings me back to the birch tree out front.

I remember the day the it came home to us. A new Walgreens had opened downtown. As a promotion the store was giving away seedling birch trees in large paper cups. Our cup turned out to contain three trees, but only one was sturdy enough to withstand the traffic outside our front door. Once it took root it grew quickly and beautifully. It never was quite tall enough for me to sit under and dream, as I had done so often with the fruit trees out back, but it was graceful, peaceful in the way that only birches can be. Their cream-colored bark, interspersed with deeply brown knots, lend themselves to an especially romantic

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