The Note Tree
I skid my bike to a stop, whacking the kickstand down as I simultaneously dismount. I step under the shady bough, the smell of pine overtaking my senses. A carpet of crispy orange needles crunches under my feet. The tree is so big that I can nearly stand under the boughs, the lowest branches beginning at the level of my head. I know it is there, though I can’t yet see it. I smile as the clothespin comes fully into view, attached to a small branch hidden among the limbs laden with thick green needles. Clamped within the clothespin, is a note.
Several years prior, a family with a girl my age moved in down the street. It had taken all my courage to walk to her house and invite her to play, but since then, we were inseparable. We spent our days riding our bikes up and down our country road, stopping to play in the stream or trek through the woods. We would go to the barn and visit with the animals, pick berries while pretending to gather food before a hurricane, muck through mud as though on a jungle safari. We would swim in her above-ground pool or invite ourselves to our neighbor’s inground pool where a boy our age lived. Our days were spent outside, and by the end of them we were tired, dirty, and covered in bug bites.
Our homes were as familiar to each other as our own. There were sleepovers and campouts and stargazing. There were fights and makeups and secrets. There were periods of intense togetherness followed by draughts of cooling off. We shared birthdays and crushes, the thrill of graduating to ten-speed bikes, the magic of witnessing a horse being born in the middle of the night.
I can’t remember whose idea it was- the clothespin in the tree, but for years it served as a way to hatch plans, air grievances, talk about the boy across the street. We left notes for each other when we couldn’t play, when we unexpectedly had to do “family” things, or just because we wanted to keep the notes going. No one passing by would have any idea they were there. In fact, occasionally a note was so well hidden, even we wouldn’t notice it. The tree was perfection: the cover so dense it took the heaviest rain to penetrate the bottom branches. Our secrets were safe there- safe from the prying eyes of siblings, grown-ups, and neighborhood boys.
I couldn’t imagine a future without this friendship, without our notes and our summers and our bikes. But sports teams came along, and homework, and different friend groups, then boyfriends and cars and life getting bigger than our country road which had once seemed enormous but now felt miniscule. The stream filled in with weeds and sand. My bike sat unused in the garage. I stopped checking the note tree. And then our family decided to move. Not far, but just out of reach.
Before permanently leaving the house, I was drawn to the tree. My heart quickened in excitement. A paper peaked out from the clothespin! It was discolored, wrinkled from rain, some of the ink smeared. In a note from long ago, my friend had asked if we could meet. Had she waited for me at the designated time and place? Wondered why I had ignored her? Felt abandoned? If I had found it sooner, would our friendship have remained unchanged? I feel guilt for not checking the tree. I am too late. We had grown too much, too far apart.
Thirty plus years later, when I have the rare good fortune of running into my friend, we reminisce, one reminding the other of adventures forgotten. There is only happiness, no regret. With age arrived the understanding of the comings and goings of people in life. We know that despite our parting, we are forever bonded from creating the best moments of our childhood together. And somewhere in Central New York, on a branch of a pine tree, is a clothespin waiting for its next note.