Red Room Where the Writers Are

Sunlight streams through the kitchen window and falls like gold onto the dogs who lie spread out on the floor at my feet. After several days of grey skies and rainfall it is a welcome sight. A light and warm breeze causes the Ash tree to sway bossa nova style and fills the window frame like a painting. This year it appears especially splendid and proud looking. The leaves seem to speak to me with their movement - sweet words that say

     i am glad that you planted me here so that i can enjoy this sweet warm breeze and the tinkle of the bell hidden in the folds of my forest green dress and where i can watch you at the table as you write. but why do you look so sad today? how could you on this impossibly marvellous evening? all the good things that surround you? take that nice round table for example and how it accomodates the paper on which you write, the way you hold the pen in your hand. is it not a paint brush of a kind? and what about that gingham cloth and the bowl of apples and lemons placed in the centre. did you buy that bowl in Portugal? you did, didn't you. you had it bound in bubble wrap and carried it back on the plane yourself. i am surprised at your sadness because you love beautiful things, the more primitive, the better. raw. simple. that's what you try to do with words, sometimes you succeed.....

 The Ash sighs then appears to droop before continuing.

     go on mary. spit it out.

I can't Ash tree. I think it silly to talk to trees and to hear them talk back, well, I mean, honestly what would people think? My husband is a psychologist, I am sure he has a label for this madness. I must be going crazy. It was inevitable. I am scared. This is not a desirable scenario.

    look at me. what do you see? i am an old tree now and i have watched you for fourteen years. i have seen you through steamed up winter windows that caused you to appear ill-defined, shadowy and distorted as you  made stews and lit candles and battled on with your thoughts, sometimes happy and other times not so, when your face appeared drawn and bitter. why i've seen you on christmas mornings pouring coffee with hints of baileys cream and what about all those birthdays and the blown out wishes and i saw  you too when your mother died, how when you heard the news you said nothing, as a door slammed shut on that august day. i've seen you laugh yourself silly and sob like a banshee.

Ash tree please. I cannot tell you because I do not know. Yet. I must allow myself to see and you will learn my sadness in time. For now keep dancing for me, your beauty sustains. Sometimes you are all I have.