Mom's Elm

Pop planted the American Elm tree in the front meadow, next to the curved edge of the corn field, so he could see it as he sat in the front porch swing. He planted it as a memorial to Mom who loved trees as much as he did. He planted it because he remembered when the street where he learned to walk in Wilmington DE and the central campus of the University of Delaware, where he went to college, were lined with the magnificent arches of the trees overhead. 

Pop loved trees. Due to his good husbandry of the farm’s 50 acres of woods, the whole farm had been designated an American Tree Farm. We had spent many hours in our childhood planting unusual trees as Pop experimented with different varieties.

Pop also loved a good view. He often planted trees strategically to block out ugly buildings on neighboring farms. A Deodor cedar almost hid the pretentious columns added when the Frock family put a second story on their house. An English Walnut hid the doublewide Jimmy Yale’s farmhand had moved in on the edge of his farm.

But Mom’s Elm was his favorite tree on the farm. Pop was one of the original members of the American Elm Society that supported research to see if a cure for the devastation of Dutch Elm disease that wiped out the trees in the 1950s and ‘60s could be found. He was proud that he was keeping one alive.

The Elm he planted for Mom was a beauty, a rare healthy American Elm that loved its featured spot in the middle of the best view on our 170-acre Maryland dairy farm. It grew tall and spread its strong limbs 40-feet wide. The heifers found shade under its dark green canopy, robins and wrens raised their young high inside. One 4th of July, a cow had her calf under the tree’s protective cover.

Pop learned all he could about how to keep the tree safe from the dreaded fungal disease. He mowed the grass underneath, and carefully trimmed the bottom branches so they wouldn’t touch the ground or the grass. He cleaned fallen branches out from under and eventually put a fence up around it so the cows wouldn’t make the ground too hard by their weight and constant stamping away flies. 

The tree grew into its role as a sacred place. It quietly became the focal point, the first thing we looked for as we came to visit Pop from our new home in North Carolina. We loved seeing it gently change to orange-yellow in the fall, and its skeleton black and white curve on the winter horizon. Each spring we looked for the first sign of leaves to make sure it was still healthy. We sat in the porch swing with Pop and admired it.

Pop died last June at 94. Two years earlier he had successfully sold the developmental rights to the state of Maryland so the farm would always remain open space. He had willed his body to be used for science. My sister and I agreed that we would return to spread his ashes under the Elm this Fall.

We sold the farm to the neighboring Amish family. Two of their daughters had married brothers from another Amish family. We were pleased and we thought Pop would be happy with their plan to turn the farm back into the working dairy farm it was when we were growing up. Pop had talked often with David, the Amish father, about the importance of the trees in preventing soil erosion, providing shade and protection for wildlife. We’d told David about the sacred properties of the Elm as we signed the deeds of sale. 

But this week, on the first anniversary of Pop’s passing, we learned from friends who have driven by the farm, that the Elm is no longer standing. Few of the old and unusual trees are. The Amish have cut them down, piled them up and burned them. Apparently, their six-mule teams cannot as easily maneuver around big old trees in the middle of fields as modern tractors can. Big old trees, even sacred ones, are not practical when the field needs tilling in straight rows.

We will have to find another place for Pop’s ashes. We hope Pop and Mom are sitting somewhere on a different porch swing looking at other trees. We hope they know how sorry we are.

Retiring

I cleaned out my UNC office yesterday. A bittersweet moment. It didn't hit me until we were all done and I walked back to get my Carolina blue umbrella in the otherwise empty office.

35 years and now I've taken my hand out of the water. James, my husband, in a sort of supportive way has said not to worry about being replaced, because, of course I will be replaced. He said retirement is like pulling your hand out of a bucket of water -- you should notice how quickly the place where your hand was fills back in.

I'm not so worried about that -- I've seen how quickly my colleagues who retired or died were forgotten, their offices filled with someone else's books and busy-ness. I've vowed not to be like my retired colleagues who opine on our faculty listserv, as if they were still a part of the day-to-day work of the School.

As I emptied my file cabinets of all those folders from past classes and copies of journal articles that are all now online I felt relief that I don't have to think up the next project or stay current on the literature, that I don't need to write another syllabus for this semester's class.

I have helped train a couple of generations of young scholars who will do good research, much of it better than anything I ever did. Most are good teachers, too, cause they like young people and they embrace the world of 24-7 media access and social media. I'm still in the dark ages, loving the visual eye candy of women's magazines, humming 60s songs, and still not sure about the allure of Facebook and tweets. Time for me to go home so I can read the print edition of the New York Times with my tea in the morning.

Some of it was harder to toss -- all those qualitative interviews that we never fully analyzed, the drawer full of tape recordings of adolescents in their bedrooms -- the stuff that should have resulted in a book that I never wrote. Actually I couldn't bear to throw all that away so I packed it up to send to  my former doctoral student who did the work with me, got her dissertation out of it, and now has tenure. She said she wanted it, but she's in the middle of a fight to adopt her second child -- she's never going to look at it again. At least it will be hers to discard -- probably when she cleans out her office 25 years from now.

I'm going to send some of the bound dissertations to their writers, other former doctoral students, most of whom wrote wonderful notes of thanks in the front. I hope they think my returning their dissertation is a good thing rather than a sign that I don't care anymore, even though that may be the truth.

Now I know why a former colleague who shared my office for a couple of years after retiring from a long career at the National Institute of Mental Health, eventually declined any offer I made to include him in research projects. He said, "I've been on the front lines for 30 years, it's time for others to do it now."

I'll miss getting to know new students, getting to help them think about their futures. I was happy to be the "nicest person on the planet" in the school as my good friend and colleague Cathy Packer put it in her introduction before my last lecture. I'm glad I stayed long enough to not care about the politics, to just be helpful and for students and junior faculty rather than thinking only of my own career. I'm glad to be going while folks still like me and think they'll miss me, even though it won't take long until they don't.