The question being something like "have you ever made an attachment to an
inanimate object?"... Wow, I've wanted to tell someone about this for a
long time, but couldn't bear the thought of a dumbfounded stare/rolling eye
response.
For the past eight years, I've ridden a commuter railroad line into town.
Just south of the Harlem-125th Street station is the brand spankin' new
North General Hospital. Two blocks above it along the elevated tracks is
the site of the old North General. The old hospital building probably was
built in the mid-'50s, and had sadly deteriorated, not unlike most of the
surrounding neighborhood. From the train, I would look down and depending
on the speed and traffic conditions on the line, I could often read
makeshift signs placed in the fenestrations of the abandoned and burned out
buildings, some dedicated to racial vitriol concerning the lack of adequate
fire protection for the area residents and their losses due to it, others
more commercially rendered: open community requests to young black men not
to abandon their families and to stay away from drugs. Among this decay,
the hospital building stood soldiering along serving East Harlem. It's
L-shaped structure gave shelter to one great monument: a 60 foot tall tree,
probably an oak or maple.
When the train was particularly slow through this section, I would ponder
the tree, wondering how many patients or visitors were gazing concurrently
at the tree from within the hospital, and also what they might be thinking.
When the weather was bright I thought about birds living in nests within the
tree, fathers and mothers joyful with newborns in the hospital. In grey
Novembers I watched the last leaf fall from its branches and prayed for
those in pain or devastated by a poor prognosis and the fearful waiting to
die. How many souls looked upon it's leaves in their last earthly moments?
I associated that tree with a whole circle of life and I thanked it for
those who wouldn't or couldn't.
The construction on the new hospital was completed about 5 years ago. I was
glad for the community in their having received a modern, up-to-date
facility and the lives it would save. The new hospital had no great tree,
but the latest and greatest in medical technology. The demolition of the old
building was begun soon after. The wrecking ball worked quickly on the upper
floors. Excavation revealed its inner workings. The tiled operating rooms
in the basement were exposed. Every day I noticed that the bulldozers were
continuing to spare the tree, though its placement couldn't have made their
work any easier. The building was soon gone but the vacant lot graded flat
gave rise only to that tree. A podiatric clinic across the street soon
commandeered the lot for overflow parking.
I anxiously awaited the spring, to see if the tree would live. I feared
that it's roots were damaged by the demolition and it was now exposed to
shock and disease. It seemed to take a little bit longer that year, but
soon there were red buds on the tips of branches and it breathed green
again.
It fought for two more years and then did not return in the spring of 1997.
Perhaps there was damage from the heavy equipment, or a new drainage flow
that starved it. I mused that it might have been because it somehow knew it
wasn't needed to shade and inspire anyone, anymore. The cars that parked
below the tree sought nothing from it, their owners likely cursing the birds
who continued to rest upon it's bare branches. Sometime within the fall, the
trunk was removed and the cars claimed victory over the stump. From my
vantage point I could see no visable signs of disease on its rings, shaved
smooth to the ground.
The next spring ground was broken for new public housing on the site:
low-rise buildings with a courtyard and a new philosophy: enabling residents
to take advantage of subsidized cooperative living. The U-shaped buiding
complex was built to the west of the tree's placement and a pristine macadam
parking lot to serve it layered atop what roots remained protected by a tall
black iron fence. Of course, some obvious song lyric came to mind at
witnessing the last addition.
I think about that property every time I see it and wonder if it's somehow
holy by virtue of cast prayers caught and leached into the earth there. I
wonder if it's crazy for a person to think that a tree could be a friend or
a savior. And I keep watching one section of blacktop, hoping to spy a
small crack.
CC
"Nothing lasts for long." -- JM
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
