A tree is planted. Its roots grab on to the soil beneath it and begin carving its new home. Each day it digs in further; slowly and securely spreading its roots deeper, with each inch becoming further invested in that space. The tree has found a place to make its home and settles. It is nourished here. It finds comfort here. It grows here and will grow here for generations… if you let it.
I used to be a tree – before moving abroad that is – before digging up my roots and moving them to foreign soil. I stood confidently grounded in my home land, loving the earth that swaddled me, that held me and nourished me. So why, you might ask, would I have chosen to lift these roots and attempt to transplant them elsewhere?
I wasn’t unhappy. I could start there. I had what I needed to thrive and more than that, I enjoyed my life. I had enough. And so the only thing I could come up with is that I wanted more – that blanket word we use when we can’t exactly pinpoint what else we are in search of. This was some intangible, invisible idea of wanting to widen, and wanting to see and feel and understand more than the land I was settled into so solidly. I guess, I didn’t just want to be planted deep, I wanted to set out, to expand, to broaden.
When we moved, it was as hard as you could imagine it would be to rip up a tree that was so firmly developed in its home and while the leaves and branches and trunk lifted up, many of the roots stayed behind; it’s impossible to undig so much history. These roots were so invested in the soil they had grown up in that I wasn’t sure they would ever allow themselves to be transplanted anywhere else and surely a tree without roots wouldn’t survive.
But a funny thing happened with our uprooting… our [family] tree, instead of burrowing new roots profoundly in the dirt, started to unfold another way. Life always finds a way I suppose.
Weaving ourselves into the new life we had chosen, we were creating a different kind of root – a vine – one that didn’t dig as deeply into the earth but that grows fast and expands its reach outward, broadening its scope with each inch of space it clutched.
Like most vines that grow counterclockwise, our family wasn’t growing in the typical direction but we were flourishing anyway. As newly planted vines, we had no choice but to wrap our entire stems around our support and cling on for existence. We were aware that in order to survive we had to depend on others, lean on others to help make us stronger. Without these supports, we had no chance of existing but with them… we were unstoppable. Unyielding. Tenacious. Difficult to break. And perhaps, that is my favorite part of being a vine – that we can grow anywhere, as long as there is some sort of connection.
Both Husband and I have lived both kinds of lives, of roots and vines, and I can’t tell you which life I like better: the sturdy one of a tree that thrives with deep roots and is rich in history or the outward expanding one of vines that coil themselves around other vines enabling it to project itself further beyond its origin. They both have their place in nature, they both have figured out how to withstand and endure and while one could argue that vines aren’t as solid as trees or that trees aren’t as traveled as vines, I can’t help but think What does it matter how we grow as long as we grow.
What are your thoughts? Are you of tree or of vine?
