Evelyn has recently started asking Nick if he’d like to go upstairs and start Fight Club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not entirely sure where our four-year-old picked up this phrase, but her version of Fight Club consists of launching stuffed baby dragons at whichever unsuspecting parent agrees to participate. The first rule of Fight Club clearly doesn’t apply to preschoolers because she has absolutely no problem telling everyone about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you know what? With the way my perimenopausal, Aquarian brain has been working lately, starting a Fight Club sounds pretty appealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not necessarily the physical kind. I’m 45, and my body already finds plenty of reasons to hurt without voluntarily getting assaulted by stuffed dragons. But the idea of addressing uncomfortable things head-on instead of continually working around them? I could get behind that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which brings me to trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, trees. I realize that’s a strange transition, but you’re going to have to bear with me because I’ve somehow developed an entire philosophical relationship with roadside vegetation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s Thursday morning as I’m putting this together, mostly through voice notes while driving to my yearly doctor’s appointment. My writing routine has been a little off lately, and I’ve found myself waiting until Thursdays to pull everything together. Rather than spend another evening staring at my computer wondering what the hell I’m going to write about, I figured I’d take advantage of the uninterrupted time and let my thoughts wander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My appointment went well. I got my ladies fondled for screening, was spared the speculum, and now just need to schedule my next round of titty twisting, otherwise known as a mammogram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, with my annual women’s maintenance underway, my mind was free to contemplate the structural integrity of trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honestly, I don’t know how Nick keeps up with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve always enjoyed pointing out little things to the girls when we’re driving. Years ago, I started teaching them to look for missing letters on illuminated signs and make up funny sayings using whatever letters were still working. It was my way of getting their faces out of their phones and encouraging them to pay attention to the world around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More recently, I started pointing out trees growing around electrical wires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You know the ones. They’re big and beautiful, perfectly full toward the bottom, but when you look up, there’s an enormous section carved right out of the middle. Sometimes one entire side has been cut practically straight up, as though somebody took a giant pair of scissors to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And naturally, I started wondering what came first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tree or the wires?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did somebody plant that tree knowing electrical lines would eventually run through it? Was the tree there first, minding its own business, when somebody decided that was the perfect place to run power? At what point did everyone agree that the tree was going to be the one making the accommodations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are the questions my brain needs answered while other people are probably just trying to get to the grocery store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But here’s what really got me thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those trees don’t necessarily get cut back every year. Over time, they’re trimmed to keep their branches away from the wires, and they continue growing wherever there’s room. Some become lopsided. Others have enormous gaps through the middle, with branches reaching higher above the lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And from the bottom, they can look perfectly healthy. Full of beautiful leaves, strong trunks, plenty of life happening. But when you look up, there can be entire sections missing, while other parts have grown so heavily that the tree looks like it might tip over if somebody sneezes too hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which seems like a questionable arrangement when you live in Northern New York, where winter eventually comes along and dumps a ridiculous amount of snow on everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All that snow settles on the branches, adding weight that some of them might not be able to support. And when those branches snap, where do they have the potential to land?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right on the damn power lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The very thing everyone was trying to protect by cutting the tree back in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, I’m certainly not an arborist, and I’m sure the people responsible for maintaining those lines have perfectly reasonable explanations for all of this. But I couldn’t help laughing at the irony of potentially creating another problem while trying to prevent the original one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And wouldn’t you know it, my brain found a way to turn that into a relationship metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because how often do we do something similar?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We avoid uncomfortable conversations because we don’t want an argument. We let certain things go because we love someone, because we’re trying to be understanding, or because bringing something up might disrupt an otherwise good day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And sometimes that’s exactly what we should do. Not every irritation needs to become a full-blown discussion. God knows if Nick and I addressed every little thing that annoyed us about each other, we’d never have time to discuss anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there’s a difference between choosing your battles and continually avoiding the same one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ten days ago, I sent an email about something I’d been hoping to have a conversation about for quite some time. Nothing I need to get into here, but it was important to me, and I hoped putting my thoughts into words would open the door to discussing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That conversation hasn’t happened yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was talking with my best friend Marisa about it today, as I often do when my thoughts are running in twelve different directions, and she said something that stuck with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Avoidance is a form of communication.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, shit. There’s something to think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t necessarily know what someone’s silence means. People process things differently, and I can appreciate that not everyone is ready to tackle an uncomfortable conversation at the same time. But what Marisa said made me think about the difference between giving something time and allowing it to go unaddressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And suddenly, those damn trees made even more sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because whether we’re cutting things back or finding ways to grow around them, we’re still making adjustments to accommodate whatever is in the way. Sometimes those adjustments are necessary, but other times they become so familiar that we don’t even recognize how much we’ve changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I wonder how often we confuse keeping the peace with actually having it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last night was senior night for one of my bonus girls, and I found myself navigating another one of those complicated blended-family situations. I love my girls, and I will always show up to support them. But standing together for a school event doesn’t magically erase years of difficult history or mean we’re all one big, happy family with the same intentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can be polite. I can celebrate an important moment. I can put my feelings aside because the night isn’t about me. But those feelings don’t stop existing simply because I’ve learned how to manage them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that’s probably what has been sitting with me lately. Not that my life is somehow miserable or that everything is wrong. Quite the opposite. There’s so much about my life that I genuinely love, which makes me more aware of the things I don’t want to keep carrying into the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’re still hopeful about some changes we’ve been working toward, and while we wait, I’m trying to enjoy the life happening right in front of me. I’m working a little more, finding my way back into my walks, watching our girls grow up, and trying to keep some stability in routines that seem to change every time I get comfortable with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe that’s part of why autumn always gets me thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve always been fascinated by the pine trees we see traveling toward the Adirondacks, particularly those windswept ones with most of their branches growing on one side. They remind me of giant sailboat masts, shaped by years of exposure to the conditions around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there are the trees I remember being planted when I was little. Tiny things that are now enormous, having spent decades growing while I’ve been busy living my own life. I wonder how many people have passed beneath them, how many storms they’ve weathered, and how much the world around them has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And every fall, when the leaves begin turning, I find myself wondering whether those colors were inside the trees all along or whether everything they experienced throughout the year helped determine how beautiful they’d become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As it turns out, it’s a little of both. The kinds of pigments a tree can produce are part of its biology, but the weather and growing conditions influence the colors we eventually see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I find that fascinating, especially because the same tree can look different from one autumn to the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fall is one of those seasons that holds a lot for me. It’s the time of year when Nick and I met, when the itch to travel starts creeping back in, and when I begin preparing myself for the long Northern New York winter. It’s also the season when I lost my mother, so even the most beautiful autumn afternoon can bring a mixture of feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s a lot of history wrapped up in one season, and perhaps that’s why I find myself paying so much attention to everything that’s changing around me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t look at those oddly shaped trees and think they’re ugly or damaged. I’m genuinely amazed by how they grow, how they adapt, and how beautiful they can be even when they look nothing like the tree standing beside them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I also wonder whether we sometimes confuse our ability to adapt with an obligation to keep accommodating something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t know exactly what kind of tree I’m going to look like when all is said and done. Life has already shaped me in ways I never anticipated, and I’m sure there will be more changes ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I just don’t want to spend so much time protecting everything around me that I end up full at the bottom, heavy at the top, and missing an entire section of myself in the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d like to keep growing without automatically assuming that every uncomfortable thing needs to be worked around. Sometimes it deserves an actual conversation, even when that conversation is difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And perhaps that’s why Evelyn’s invitations to Fight Club have been making me laugh so much lately. Our four-year-old has absolutely no interest in tiptoeing around anything. She knows what she wants, she’s willing to announce it, and she’s fully prepared to throw a dragon if necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not suggesting we all start throwing things at the people we love. Although I do wonder whether a stuffed dragon might occasionally get a conversation started faster than an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For now, I’ll keep taking my walks, enjoying the beautiful October colors, asking ridiculous questions about roadside trees, and encouraging the girls to look up every once in a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You never know what you’ll notice when you do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Evelyn has recently started asking Nick if he’d like to go upstairs and start Fight Club. I’m not entirely sure where our four-year-old picked up this phrase, but her version of Fight Club consists of launching stuffed baby dragons at whichever unsuspecting parent agrees to participate. The first rule of Fight Club clearly doesn’t apply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lately"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}