Amber After

When I was little, we had an Amber tree in our front yard. Everyone climbed in it to harvest the "pricker" balls that could be thrown at friends for hours of painful fun. It had been there for as long as I could remember and the changing of the leaves was the only sign that this beach town went through seasons at all. Every time I'd walk by it, I'd let my hand brush across its rough bark just as a reminder that it was here, that we were one of the few lots to be graced with this big lovely tree. There was this "gang" of kids from the other side of the block who had spread a rumor to the other kids that our mother was a "floating witch with red eyes", that they'd seen her gravitating over our fence one day, eyes a-glow. My sister and I collected all the pricker balls we could hold in our shirts and confronted these misleading hooligans by ambushing them. The air was littered with pricker balls soaring left and right. The rumors stopped. I loved that tree.
Time went on and suddenly the roots became a hassle to the homeowners. They were growing into waterlines causing issues for...people who were not us. Ironic, since it was on our lot. They cut the tree down and replaced it was a puny palm tree that I hated. It represented nothing. It showed no seasons, it did not contain subtle weapons. When they cut it down I salvaged a small disk from the trunk that had been sliced up in some terrible, toothy machine. I think I cried a little and stashed it away in my drawer. I like trees. I don't take enough time to appreciate them. I feel like it was symbolic when they cut down this huge beautiful tree of my childhood and replaced it with a scrawny scratchy palm tree that haunts my everyday...yard. I can now relate it to that movie "Flipped" where the girl protests and cries and sits in the tree, only I did one of those things and am not a white suburban adolescent. I don't really have a point here, I'm just saying that trees are cooler than they are credited for. That tree was probably here before we were and then they just chopped it down because the tree had no voice. "It's better to help [trees] than garden gnomes"
 adieu