Save Our Oak

The red weather-torn letters read, “SAVE OUR OAK.” They peel away from a yellow poster that’s topped with a large, bright, yellow ribbon. The sign hangs across a chain link rent-a-fence. My neighborhood is under construction— the fence stretches for miles, encircling plots of property scattered with bulldozers, wood chippers, and tractors. The land is being cleared of tangles — trees, bushes, and fields of grass— the foundation for new homes.

I gently realign the peeling “S” in SAVE. Yesterday, while on my run, I found the S, blown from the sign, a few feet down the road. I quickly tucked it back beneath the “A” and continued my run. I don’t know who hung the sign, but attending to the poster has become part of my running route. Each day, for a split second, I give the letters, the bright yellow bow, and the sign my attention and care.

But today, I am completely stopped — I can’t move on, I can’t explain why, except, I know I’m upset. Upset because of Nora’s EEG results from this afternoon. Upset because, she is having head drop seizures — seizures we had not seen since 2016—the year our family remembers as “The year of turmoil.”

2016 was the year Nora lost the brightness in her two-year-old eyes, her ability to sit up, eat independently, smile, and even breathe through lungs that, quite suddenly, began to fail her. Today, before leaving on my run, I told two of my heart people — Melanie and Dar — through tears, about the EEG results that showed evidence of frequent split- second head drop seizures. I also told them I was scared.

They cried as I told them about the happenings of 2016, how I held Nora in my lap, over a 30- week- old swollen pregnant belly, with a bottle in my hand, hoping and praying she might eat. I explained how those days were quiet: just me, Nora, and the baby boy growing inside me — the boy I first felt flutter and move at Nora’s hospital bedside, as she lay seizing, in the ER. It was the day I felt my son move that I discovered hearts can hold both joy and agony, simultaneously, and all at once, just as hearts can hold both faith and doubt.

I gently re-secure the tape from the poster to the fence, knowing it is unlikely the sign, or the delicate yellow bow, will change the outcome for the tree. Yet I know I will continue to attend to the words, “SAVE OUR OAK.” Probably because hope deserves attending to. And so does pain — my pain. The type of pain that comes from praying and begging the same prayer — a single note verse — a silent scream, “Please save my daughter.” A prayer that was, and is, here and now, answered by a single breath: “I Am here.”

I breathe. I know it’s not the pain, that brings me here, weeping, beneath the branches of an oak tree: it’s the breath.  

Photo credit: Jessica Rice Photography (2016)