Great-grandmother's Pine Tree
As a little girl, my mother played hide and seek beneath the boughs of this very pine tree. I imagine her leaning against sticky bark as she counted backwards from one hundred. Her cousins scurrying about securing a hiding place as the numbers dwindled downward. 87…86… 85… hiding behind a shed…43…42…41…down the orange tiger lily path to the side of the outhouse…21…20…19…crouched behind the pump.
My great-grandfather sat beneath this pine tree’s shade on the front porch smoking a pipe and telling stories on summer evenings as my great aunts talked to one another in that sacred language only close sisters know.
And me? I smell the pine fragrance, hear all those voices, and know that I belong.
