Life Lessons from a Tree
by Kate Everson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Kate Everson
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Accept forgiveness. You are forgiven. Now forgive yourself.
This is the Life Lesson Rebekah learned from a very tall pine tree and a porcupine. She had been out in the woods with her new boyfriend and he told her to aim his shotgun at a the top of a pine tree at that little dot up there on a limb. She aimed, pulled the trigger, and the porcupine came tumbling down. She was devastated.
“I didn’t know I would hit it,” she cried.
“Oh, you’re a great shot!” shouted the boyfriend. And he called his friends over to tell them the news. They all congratulated her, and laughed at her scared face. “It’s Okay,” they said. “It’s just a porcupine! There are lots of them.”
Rebekah never really got over it. She had killed a living creature, just for fun. For the rest of her life, it would haunt her. She could not forgive herself.
The next time she saw a porcupine she apologized profusely.
“I am so sorry for what I did,” she told the porcupine who only wanted to climb higher and get away from her. “I am really sorry for having killed one of your family. Please forgive me.” The porcupine climbed higher still.
He didn’t seem very interested in taking her confession. In fact, Rebekah sensed that he didn’t really like her very much at all.
“Well, I don’t blame him,” she said to herself. “After all, who would want a killer as a friend?”
Rebekah left that boyfriend with the gun and never really forgave him or herself for having shot the porcupine.
But she went on through her life, not really thinking about it much until one day. Someone online was talking about hedgehogs in England. Suddenly, she was talking about porcupines. The creatures were a lot alike. But hedgehogs were so cute, and she would never want to kill one of them.
She felt the pain all over again. Porcupine killer. How could she ever be set free from that guilt? It followed her like a dark cloud. Even the clouds had eyes, that seemed to watch her and hold her responsible.
Everywhere she went, something was watching her. Even the old cedar
rail fence leered at her. A hole in the oak tree where a woodpecker
had gone watched as she walked by.
There was no escape. She felt like a prisoner of her own guilt.
“I want to feel alive and whole again,” she said to herself. “I can hide the thoughts for awhile but then they keep coming back.”
Whenever she walked in the woods, she watched the trees. She felt they knew her secret. Wasn’t it a tree that tried to save the porcupine and let it climb higher and higher? They watched her darkly.
Every tree along that line of the hill seemed to know. They must talk to each other and share dark secrets. Whispering pines bad-mouthing to the birches, and passing it on. Even the oaks knew. Those big gnarly trees she had loved to climb were off-limits to Rebekah. How could she go back?
But she loved the woods! Even though they held her pain they also held her delight. She had wandered through those trees and fields since she was a girl. Climbed the high hill, put her feet in the stream, listened to the birds and sometimes even watched a deer dart into the bushes.
Now, what did she have left? Where could she turn? She wanted someone or something to forgive her, to set her free. Who could it be? Would anyone allow her to be free after what she had done? She felt like such a monster.
Somehow she managed to get by. She walked through the fields, crossed the cedar rail fence with its penetrating eyes, and stopped to look at the pretty wild flowers growing in the spring. She knew them by name. Trillium, mayflowers, violets, dog-toothed violet. Soon the red honeysuckle would be out and the dancing black-eyed Susans. It was so beautiful in the woods. Her woods. Her world.
Rebekah would sometimes lie down in the tall, waving grasses and look up at the sky. The white fluffy clouds were on an adventure, racing across the sky. She turned away for a minute, then looked back to see if they had changed shapes. It was a little game she played with them. They might pretend to be not moving, staying the same, but if she turned away they would suddenly switch positions, shoot straight up with a gust of wind or make a huge eye in the middle. Her favourite was when they grew long feathered wings stretching out behind. She imagined she could ride on those wings any time she wanted.
In fact, that was Rebekah’s secret dream, to fly. She had dreamed many times of leaving the ground with just a slight jump, soaring into the sky. She flew above the trees and houses, bouncing off treetops if she came too close. Nobody seemed to notice her, which she found quite surprising. Maybe she was invisible too!
In Rebekah’s world all things were possible. What good was reality anyway if it wasn’t any fun?
All her life Rebekah had been very shy with people. But with nature she came alive. The trees, the birds, the sky did not judge her. They did not care if she said the wrong thing, or wore the wrong clothes. They did not mind if her hair wasn’t quite right. She was one of them, a creature of the wild, and belonged just as much as they did to the world around them.
That’s why it hurt so much to think they might despise her now. All because she listened to some stupid boyfriend who told her to do a really dreadful thing. Why didn’t she say no? Did she need his acceptance so much she was willing to go against her own wishes and good judgement?
Boys were always so demanding, so controlling. Rebekah wondered if she would ever find one that respected her the way she deserved.
“I don’t need them anyway!” she said to herself. “Who needs them?”
But inside, she did not know if that was true. She felt weak sometimes, easily led. So eager to impress or at least be accepted. That was her downfall. Perhaps it was like that with all girls, she thought. Maybe we were born this way.
Then she had to laugh! Of course, that was a Lady Gaga song! She loved Gaga and saw in her everything she wanted to be. Strong, independent, imaginative, and not afraid of what people would say. She chose her own way of doing things, and led rather than followed. Gaga was Rebekah’s idol.
“I would love to be like her,” Rebekah smiled.
To her, beauty was something she didn’t have but always longed for. She saw beauty in the world around her and in other people, but never in herself.
And then she remembered another Gaga song, “I’m On the Edge of Glory.” She wondered if that was true for her. Would she ever be on the edge of glory? Was there something amazing waiting for her? Maybe it was just around the corner and she only had to be patient. Who knew?
So Rebekah sat in the middle of a field of wild flowers and said a prayer to the Sky, the Clouds, the Trees, and All That Is.
“Forgive me for all things I have ever done wrong,” she said.
And she felt in her heart they did.
“I forgive myself for anything I have done wrong,” she added. “Even to the porcupine.”
Suddenly she felt lighter. The Sky seemed to be a brighter blue. The clouds were winking at her. And a tall pine tree on the hill waved gently in her direction.
All was good again. She was forgiven. She had forgiven herself. She was truly on the edge of Glory.
* * The End * *