8/11/2019 Tree Cups

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Tree Cups

I have always loved trees. I remember sitting underneath a great maple tree when I was four

years old thinking about God. It was in the backyard of my Uncle’s house next to the fenced off

school yard where I would become educated in another language. We had recently immigrated

to Canada. I left my mountain home full of wolves and superstition and became a flat-lander

living on the Lake Erie plain. We arrived to a real Canadian winter; you know snow drifts that

were eight feet high My father was thirty five and my mother was twenty eight. It is hard to

believe that forty-four years have passed by.

The trees that surrounded my village home stood as silent witnesses to events that were

horrific as they were stupid. We left because the stones of my homeland where etched with

violence; always another nation or another ideology trying to make my ancestors kneel to

Christ, bow to Allah or submit to a leader propped by the West. Little wonder that I have a bad

taste for imposed authority. There was no other choice than to become a philosopher, a writerand an artist.

The tree in the front yard of our first house was a Kentucky coffee tree. The tree was ill named.

Its seeds were poisonous. It wasn’t from Kentucky and no coffee was ever found near it.

Apparently it was a rare and protected species The previous owner told us that school children

would visit the tree on field trips. It was close to 100 feet tall and stood like a the CN Tower on

Elgin Street North next to Main.

My father wanted to cut it down to make it resemble his own distinctive looking Croatian

bonsai maple trees that make Suzanne shudder in patriotic protest. She thinks that maple treesare sacred and should not be trimmed Vinko and Violet style. In the fall, the Kentucky coffee

tree dropped pods and branches that littered the lawn and driveway a foot deep. The debris

would be visible in the snow as if to say that the spring will always overtake the winter. The real

estate agent did not mention the amount of work the ensuing mess would be to clean up.

During the recent ice storm, braches full of water and flash frozen came crashing down around

the house. One branch clipped the eavestrough and slid down the front windows while another

took out the corner of the backyard fence. This affirmed my father’s wisdom that one should

never buy a house surrounded by huge trees.

When we moved to our new neighborhood I notice a tree in the front yard of a house that

would always have coffee cups placed in the hollow space at the base of its trunk. I wasn’t sure

whether I should drop some change into them or take them home and return them freshly

washed.

8/11/2019 Tree Cups

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For some reason, this image of coffee cups at the base of a tree intrigued me. Who were these

coffee drinkers who left their unwashed cups in the snow, sleet, sunshine and rain? Did the

cups function as a kind of secret signal; a silent Morse code that could never morph into a

blackberry disaster? Were the cups some kind of environmentally friendly beetle trap or

perhaps a urine catcher for the neighborhood dogs?

I thought the cups might be a new decorative trend to filter down from Toronto; thought up by

bored high-rise dwellers indignant at living in over-priced tiny squares of designer delight. Who

will ever know what these cups leaning against each other, propped up at the base of a large

tree actually mean. Can the archaeologists of everyday rituals solve the riddle? Whatever the

answer, I suggest that the empty cups, decorating the tree, might start a trend that would

overtake the kitschy garden gnomes and St. Francis bird feeders that come out in the spring.