Chainsaw.

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The pine tree in front of our home…right smack dab in front of our window and up against the Power lines, was here when we moved to this house.  It was one of the few trees on the property.  I am allergic to pine… but it was pretty enough and seemed strong enough.  However, it always unnerved me how  it’s branches would bounce the Power cables. It always unsettled me how it leaned too close to my daughters room.  It unsettled them too.  One morning after a great storm, they confessed to having slept (all three of them) huddled together on the bathroom floor for fear it would topple onto them in their sleep.

I had assured them it was a strong pine  which had weathered many storms and, most likely, would never go away.

I always tried to make the tree look better to them.  It blocked our vision and  I would hang bird feeders and plant complimenting plants around it’s base.  I tried to get my family to like it…to see past it’s scariness and just rest in it’s strength.    I clipped it’s branches so in ice storms it wouldn’t impede our Power.  I made such a fuss when the tree was doing anything “good”…. one year a cardinal family made a nest right in it, the baby birds chirping loudly… the parents flitting back and forth to tend them…. yet… No amount of P.R. for this tree convinced anyone.

No one ever fully trusted the tree.

Then one year…. right around my brothers wedding… the tornado came through… and when the sun rose… there was the top of the tree… crashed over, just the top of it.   The other half of it still broken and angry sticking out of the ground… but it’s head, as it where the most unsteady part ,knocked off.    We chopped up the top and stacked  it to dry for firewood.  But the bottom half we left, not really having the resources to handle it.   Till now….

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The storm ,albeit confusing to go through, had ultimately  made us safe from the tree…and we had become satisfied with just being safe… but now it is completely gone and we have a new view.  With the remnants of it gone, Light streams in wonderfully.