Swinging from the Branches of Time

by Angela Sanford

There are places from my past that hold fond memories, memories so dear that my thoughts can easily play back the still frames and short movies that were once live action. I know that one day these special places may exist only within me as the landscape changes and this particular place is on the endangered list. It is not a house or even a building, not a road nor a bank along my favourite beach. It is a tree – a prominent weeping willow.

   When I first moved to Nova Scotia at the age of six, our family lived with my grandparents while our home was being moved from Quebec to the adjacent yard in East Noel. It was spring, and I had just changed schools, as well. I remember my dad and Uncle Glenn hammering away, building an addition on the house; a house that no longer exists itself. 

   I don’t recall the willow in those early days — but it must have already been there, quietly waiting, because in the years that followed it became one of the key places in my memories of my childhood.

   You could see the long, slender, branches bending downward until they nearly brush the ground from a distance as you passed Uncle Alworth’s or Uncle Murray’s in either direction on the 215. And when you came up the driveway into my grandparents’ yard, its melancholy beauty was one of the first things that greeted you—graceful, strong, and grounding and peaceful. 

   To me, it was a palace. Beneath its umbrella of drooping green branches, I often created an imaginary playhouse. There I held picnics for my dolls, tea parties with friends, sharing after-school feasts of peanut butter and crackers. I would carry my dishes, dolls, and treasures out to its shade, claiming that spot as my own.

   As I grew older, the willow grew with me. The dolls gave way to cousins and friends, and instead of tea parties we climbed as high as we dared, perching in its top branches to read, to gossip, to test our courage and to get away from the littles who could not climb to such great heights. That tree watched us all stretch our own branches further into life.

   Years passed, and the willow became a playground once again—not for me, but for the next generation. My children and their cousins found their own magic beneath its canopy. A swing hung from the same branch that once served as the roof of my tea parties. Laughter, the same kind that echoed through my own childhood, rose and fell under its shade.

   But time touches everything. Storms in spring and fall, harsh winters, and age itself have taken their toll on the magnificent tree. The willow is no longer as strong as it once was; many branches have fallen, and its core has grown hollow. There is talk that it will soon have to be taken down. The thought feels like losing an old friend.

   And yet, it is not just my tree. It is also a bond I share with my husband, for in his own childhood yard, our front yard, stands another great tree—a pine tree that, like my willow, sheltered generations of siblings, cousins, and grandchildren. Both trees stand now as reminders: of the joy they gave, of the memories they shaped, and of the truth that all things, no matter how solid they seem, must one day come to an end.

   Still, the willow, the pine, the tree of life itself—they teach us something. They remind us that, like trees, we too grow, we too branch out, and though we may one day fall, what we leave behind are the roots we’ve planted in the lives of others. Every story told beneath their branches, every swing of a child’s legs from their limbs, every quiet moment of reflection taken in their presence carries forward long after the tree itself is gone.

   The willow may someday disappear from the yard, but its spirit continues—woven into the memories of those who played, dreamed, and grew beneath it. And in that way, we, too, live on: steady as the pine, graceful as the willow, rooted in love, and reaching ever upward.