ANASTASIA SOTIROPOULOS

Our house was built in 1977 as a one-story U-shape of wood-paneled walls and popcorn ceilings. The horseshoe hugs a courtyard consisting of a scorched bonsai, foliage of the forgettable variety, and in 2012, a massive oak. The oak reclined directly at the U’s bowl, with arms stretching over the entirety of our roof and over to the other side, its meaty fingers dangling over front windows. Only now do I realize how precisely perpendicular its limbs ran to the center of our hallway and living room—our most communal spaces, those of most traction. Depending on your persuasion, the tree was either:

1. trying to protect us all.

or

2. trying to murder us all.

The arborist said it had to be at least a hundred years old. Our house was obviously built around it. Also, it had to go. One wrong summer storm and the whole thing could come collapsing down on us. I began to wonder what would happen to its roots when it was sawed away—how far under my bed did they reach? The alleyway, road, neighbors? My dad told me something about a tree’s roots forming underground networks with trees nearby, how Everything’s Connected. I began to wonder if our oak was tethered to the one next door, and were they all friends with the trees a block down?

This was all an attempt at sympathy, but I could not stop breathing envy. It was my birthday! but I was sharing it with the funeral of a tree. There was even a procession: the arborist and his men in tan vests, my parents behind them, my gardener-grandmother sullen, my father translating for my grandfather. I sat inside the air conditioned kitchen, watching out from behind the glass. Once the men had left, my mom’s lips stiffened. I didn’t see her cry often, so although not performative, this felt weird.

We were not a family that went outside. I was once caught being taught how to climb a tree by the neighbor girl, and it did not go over well. Besides my history with breaking arms, I wasn’t supposed to be outside in the first place; Dallas summers those years were thick with hysteria over mosquito-borne West Nile. And when the air wasn’t filled with constantly televised death counts, there was a humidity so oppressive it excused, even encouraged, Wii Tennis and DS Nintendogs. The rest of the year, my dad’s CD shelves of pirated black-and-white movies kept me inside. An L-shaped couch for a U-shaped house. The tree was just part of the scenery.

I do have some memories in our backyard, but almost all are on July thirds, my birthday. Our church, only a mile away, celebrated its patriotism a day early, and it always leaked into our sky. Before double-digits, I’d get on my dad’s shoulders. The oak sat behind us.

When they cut it down, my dad told me to let her cry. I’ve always thought my mom cries in her native tongue, and the Greekness of her tears make me think of the Whorfian hypothesis, which argues that our perception of reality depends on our cognition, which depends on the language we use. Think Russian’s obligatory distinction between lighter blues (“goluboy”) and darker blues (“siniy”). In studies, a greater specificity in language translates to a greater ability to, on a visual processing level, discriminate between shades of blue. German speakers with the masculine Schlüssel find keys jagged, metal, useful; Spanish with the feminine llave see them little, lovely, tiny golden intricate things. Is a tree the German feminine Brücke, an elegant, fragile, slender bridge; or a masculine puente, sturdy, dangerous, and big?

In Latin, all the trees are feminine, even the ones that don’t look it: quercus, oak, feminine. One theory offers that it’s because the Romans believed nymphs lived in the trees, plush young women with fertile hips and a sweetness even to men. And while Greek’s trees are neuter, the ancient Greeks had dryads, too: protectors, frolickers, not immortal but very long-living. My mom cried like her old girlfriends were dead.

But our tree seemed like a man. Maybe it was the thick fingers or inability to understand personal space, or maybe it was simply that I saw it as less of a companion and more of a protector on its better days. All I knew is that he had wronged us, whether intentional or not. It took them twelve hours to bring him down.

I haven’t had coffee, so my thoughts are sporadic, sending me back to those fireworks early on the third, how I could see them from our backyard, how I felt so special, as if they were just for me. I think about how my mom cried that the tree wouldn’t see them that year, and how dramatic I thought she was.

I call my dad and ask if our old tree was an oak. He says yes, but doesn’t ask why I’m asking, just says it’s the reason our house is the shape it is. I don’t ask him what happened to the roots underneath, or if he believes in nymphs, and we wish each other a good day.