Baby oak
A symbol of my fresh start.
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My oak tree is named Virginia. I brought her home from a tree giveaway last spring with a tag that read, “Swamp White Oak: Diospyros Virginiana.” I’m a garden nerd, but not yet one who uses Latin, so Virginia it was. Later I learned that the Latin name was wrong: Diospyros is a type of persimmon, not an oak at all. But by the time I worked out the error, Virginia had stuck.
I’m aware that naming your plants is a sign of getting older, a short step from walking a dog in a baby stroller and wearing eclectic outfits at the supermarket. But if getting older means embracing your quirks, sign me up. They say middle age is when women finally stop caring what others think and start doing what brings them joy. Your twenties are for figuring out who you are and your thirties are for achieving. Your forties are for realizing that most of your identity is coping mechanisms and that achievements are overrated so you might as well name your plants.
Virginia lives in my sidewalk tree bed in front of my Brooklyn apartment. I picked Virginia because the same card that called her a persimmon also told me that she was the largest New York street tree and would grow up to 75 feet in the next 50 years. She would produce “showy” yellow blooms in spring and “showy” bronze leaves and acorns in fall. Just like in online dating, the facts were fuzzy and the descriptions overblown, but I could already picture our future together. Her acorns would appease the squirrels that ransacked my flower beds like voracious demons, but mostly I fell for her height.
Virginia, you see, was a symbol of my fresh start. The old tree in front of our house came down in a storm years before, back when the house was still “ours.” Then, as my marriage unraveled, the empty sidewalk bed grew feral from years of neglect. The wasteland of weeds and trash gnawed at me, but I didn’t do anything about it—until, one day, I did. I brought Virginia home the same week the court signed my divorce documents and dug up the bed in a burst of optimism. I told everyone who would listen – my friends, my neighbors, my mother – that Virginia and I were starting over. Some mothers get photos of grandbabies. Mine got photos of a baby tree.
“I enjoy that you are calling that a tree,” my neighbor said. She eyed the bare twig skeptically as we prepared to plant.
Virginia was roughly the size of a chopstick, but in my eyes she was pure potential. I saw her as the living marker of my second act. If she grew 1-2 feet a year, as the chirpy card promised, she’d be a proper tree by the time I was 50. When I was old and wearing eclectic outfits to the grocery store, she would reach my roof. I pictured myself with silver hair, drinking tea on the fifth floor and watching the wind rustle through her leaves. A sturdy and spacious new life, grown from a single twig.
I planted Virginia with great fanfare. “In 40 years,” I crowed on Instagram, “this oak tree will be up to my roof!” My neighbor and I talked about taking back-to-school pictures each year to mark her height. I seeded wildflowers in the bed to keep her company then sat back to watch her stunning growth. Virginia and I were ready to soak up summer and burst into life.
Except, of course, that’s not what happened. Virginia went into shock at the abrupt change. She’d been comfortable in her nursery pot and was thrust overnight into an unfamiliar world. Her leaves turned “showy” bronze, then crisped and fell. New leaves appeared. She was disoriented, uprooted. She couldn’t decide whether to bloom or withdraw, so she did both.
I say “of course” because the other thing that you learn in your forties is that nothing ever turns out the way you planned. The more certainty you express, the more likely things are to go comically awry. Instead, I should have said: “My twiglet and I are going to spend our first year single in a slow-motion identity crisis, creating new leaves and losing others. We’re growing even if it looks like we’re standing still. Please be patient with us while we re-root.”
While Virginia recalibrated, the wildflowers I’d sprinkled in her plot bloomed in weird and wonderful ways. The zinnias put on a rainbow pride parade. Flowers I didn’t remember planting made random cameos then sashayed off stage. The sunflowers grew to gargantuan heights and became our block mascots. The show-offs towered over Virginia, clocking ten years of oak growth in a single summer.
Starting over is like re-seeding a garden without knowing what will bloom. In that first summer single, my life also came alive in unexpected ways. My creativity burst into bloom. New friendships sprouted. But other seeds of starting over took longer to root. They needed another season to lie fallow in the soil and gather energy for the change to come. It took all fall for me to uproot from my dream job and clear space for freelance life. It was winter before I could bring myself to start dating again. By that time, Virginia’s bare twig poked up through the snow, no taller than when we began.
But after a winter of rest, a new season of growth began, as delightfully unexpected as the last. The tulips came up in total anarchy, re-arranged by the conniving squirrels. A new cast of wildflowers is ready to burst into bloom. The sunflowers have re-seeded themselves and are already giant, towering over the little oak. As for Virginia, she’s put out broad green leaves and is slowing adding height. I see an inch, maybe two.
“You take all the time you need,” I tell Virginia, and send a picture to my mother. Just look at these glorious leaves. I think this will be our year.
One of the unexpected joys of starting over has been hearing from others on similar journeys. If something resonates with you, I’d love for you to leave a comment, drop me an email or share a post with a friend!
Liz is a writer and photographer based in Brooklyn.
Virginia has to strengthen her roots before she can flourish. There might be a lesson in that.
Liz- It’s great seeing Virginia grow up. But more than anything, her meaning and implications—the freshest of all the fresh starts possible. Hope she’s much taller now.