The Tree Branch

There are 15 stairsteps from the sidewalk to the foot of my gorgeous, light-blue porch in New Orleans. An ash tree, planted in the sliver of grass between the street and the sidewalk, protects the porch from direct heat and sunlight. If I reach my arm out over the porch’s wrought-iron railing, I can touch some of the tree’s abundant leaves and branches.

The tree can also touch me. One branch in particular hangs so low above the steps that it slaps me in the face each time I sweatily ascend the stairs with groceries, luggage, or just my own heat-heavy body. Each time those fronds connect with my face, I quickly weave to the right or left as if that might pull me out of the way. It never does; the branch gets me every time.

I had a brief respite from this branch for those few months in late winter when all of the leaves fell. The bare, skeletal tree didn’t have nearly as much reach as its summer version. However, when coronavirus hit and I went home to Alabama for most of the spring, I missed those last weeks of peace and came back to a fully flowered tree. 

A few weeks ago, I was outside stomping down boxes for the recycling bin when the landlord came by to look at the porch. A hole had opened up in the top step, and he wanted to see the repairman’s progress in restoring it.

We stood across from each other as I maintained a six-foot distance and continued to step on boxes. I didn't know what to say and the distancing was awkward, but this was our first meeting and I didn’t want to lose the chance to get to know him a little. Soon, he gestured toward the tree overhanging the porch.

“We planted these to try to cool off that front room,” he said. 

“Ah, that’s smart! Yeah, that room does get a lot of sun, so it makes sense,” I agreed. 

“But if any of these branches give you trouble, you know you can just cut ‘em down,” he said. I looked at him incredulously.

“Oh, really?” I asked as my mind raced, wondering how fast I could find a pair of shears.

“Yeah, go for it,” he said warmly as he turned and headed back to his truck. 

While his permission to cut the branch made me excited at first, trepidation set in later. I’m a person who will really let a minor inconvenience fester. You can often find me complaining about such fixable problems as not having a phone charger in a room where I spend a lot of time, or getting trapped on overly long phone calls. Usually this is due to my belief that the problem is me, not the thing. It’s me who just needs to get up and charge the phone in the other room. I'd been reluctant to tear off that branch because I was just a renter here, someone passing through. The tree--glorious, fully-flowered, seemingly eternal in its depth and beauty--had the right of stay in this circumstance. Who was I to maim it just because I was inconvenienced? 

A few days later, I went outside to catch the morning air and do my daily stretches on the porch. At 8am it was already a soupy 81 degrees with a heat index of 89; I didn’t plan on being out for long. As I stood holding my foot behind my back, stretching my quads, I glanced down at the branch. Saw it glistening in the humidity like a shiny green switch. I walked down the steps to examine it, seeking a place to break it without completely disfiguring the tree. Finding one, I grabbed the branch by both hands and snapped, the clean sound reverberating in the quiet morning. I looked around for witnesses, perhaps a jogger pulled away from their earbuds by the ricocheting sound of the branch crying out. I was alone. 

I tossed the branch to the side by the trash cans and turned up the stairs to go back up to my porch. Peering out at the tree, I couldn’t even see where I’d torn the branch from the thick crop of shiny leaves. I went inside, thinking about the next minor inconvenience I might tackle.