Half and Half
A reflection on the mutant tree in my front yard.
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In the fall of 2022, when Haley and I decided to sell our house on Chickamauga and purchase a larger one in an area of Knoxville where our neighbors were not actively squatting or selling drugs, we made a list of things the property needed to check off before we put in an offer.
On Haley’s list were practical items. Walls, for example. Windows and doors. A refrigerator, cabinet space. Bedrooms for the additional children she requested I provide her, and a garage for storing these and other previously existing children’s rapidly outgrown clothes.
I, on the other hand, wished for the house to be move-in ready. I was willing to pay one Mexican stranger to paint upstairs. However, I had no desire to pay other non-Mexican strangers or burden my family with assisting me in completing costly renovations. Nor did I intend to dedicate any time to watching YouTube videos about how to properly replace aging linoleum floors or install electrical outlets in the kitchen.
Less practically, I pined for better neighbors. The kind who’d come to the front door to introduce themselves and offer fresh-baked cookies, not to ask for a spare iPhone they could use to install SIM cards on which they’ve stored Bitcoins they plan to use to retrieve their children from DCS1. I also required that the purchase be completed before the start of the World Cup. I could not risk missing a crucial group-stage match or knockout fixture for something as trivial as the signing of legal paperwork.
Near the middle of my wish list were trees—or rather, the absence of trees. I had spent too many nights during harsh thunderstorms on Chickamauga unable to sleep. Each time the house shook, I imagined any one of the five or six ancient trees that surrounded our property crashing through the roof and, with meticulous detail, the sequence of nightmarish conversations I’d be obligated to have with insurance agents, contractors, and my in-laws, who I’d pressure Haley into convincing to house us during the seven years it would take State Farm to pay out the repairs.
The search was grueling, so we ended up making concessions. Haley got her walls and cabinets, and I watched the World Cup final uninterrupted in the downstairs den of the new house in Halls2. The property has trees, though they are small-to-medium sized and mostly line the perimeter of the backyard, where, if they were to fall, they’d only damage a small section of chain-link fence or destroy a gutter. No biggie.
In the front, there is a single tree, pictured above.
I don’t know what kind of tree it is. Based on the Google search results for native species of East Tennessee, it could be a dogwood or a cherry tree. Though it’s hard for me to judge since I grew up in a city where all the trees not grown in parks have been cut down. I know very little about green things; the only vegetable we regularly ate growing up in my Argentinian family was bread (occasionally, my dad would make a salad with radicheta—dandelion leaves—or tomatoes and onions he grew in the garden, though he’d then drown the salad in half a liter of oil and vinegar and consume it like a bitter soup).
The beautiful white-pink flowers that recently bloomed on my tree appear on only half of it. The other half is dead. I observed this with curiosity last spring because it is not a deformed tree; the trunk does not split near the root, and it does not lean drastically to one side or another. Presumably, the tree’s roots send whatever water and nutrients it needs to survive up through the trunk. But, for some reason, they do not reach half the branches. Some of them, I’ve snapped off easily; inside, they are dry and hollow.
Because, again, I know almost nothing about trees, I thought this grotesque feature of my maybe-dogwood, maybe-cherry tree had been an anomaly of 2023. But this month, the same thing happened. Half of the tree is alive with color; the other half is deceased.
Trees appear many times in the Bible. The Old Testament references great cedars in Lebanon, and later, in the New Testament, Jesus and his homeless cousin John threaten trees that won’t bear fruit by saying they’ll be cut down and burned for their uselessness.
I don’t want to get into a long discussion about religion because I am not a preacher or a theologian. I’m just thinking about trees. And, since it’s Easter time, one of the other images I can think of is the crowds in Jerusalem cutting down palm branches to welcome Jesus to town the week of his execution. Scholars say that in the ancient world, townsfolk welcomed kings this way, laying down or waving palm branches before the royal entourage to celebrate their triumph in conquest or battle.
A few days later, Jesus is hung on a wooden cross—some say it was a tree, though I think that’s splitting hairs since Roman crosses were carved from cypress, cedar, pine, or dogwood.
When I look at the half-dead tree in my front yard, I think about what happened between Jesus’s arrival and his death. After entering Jerusalem, the carpenter-turned-preacher walked to the temple, where he discovered businessmen swindling the poor, exchanging foreign currencies, and up-charging for the animal sacrifices worshipers were expected to make to present themselves clean before God. Earlier in his ministry, Jesus had run the businessmen out of the temple, brandishing a whip of cords, releasing their livestock, and dumping their money onto the floor3. But they had returned. And presumably, he was disappointed, indignant. After flipping over their tables a second time, he declared they’d turned a place of prayer into a den of thieves4. Then he healed the poor and lame for free, and the religious leaders were distraught, for they were in on the hustle.
The next morning, Jesus and his friends were walking back to town hungry because they had skipped breakfast. On a nearby hill, Jesus spotted a fig tree. Even though it was early in the season for figs, the tree had sprouted leaves. Elated, he strolled up to it, expecting fruit. But there were none. So he cursed the tree. “May no fruit ever come from you again!” he shouted loud enough for his friends to freak out after it began to wither and die before their eyes.
Many people smarter in the ways of religion, history, and the geography and cultures of the Near East have interpreted this passage. I have no interpretation for you. But I am thinking about this fig tree as I stare out at my own deformed tree and also down into my soul.
A lot of times, I also feel half-alive, half-dead. There are moments, sometimes every day, in which I am overjoyed and then immediately distraught. I feel trapped in some ways and, in others, quite free. You have your own experiences of this, I’m sure, so there is little need for elaboration.
As a man, I try my best to be associated with the adjectives our society uses to describe people we admire and respect. Out of desire, not obligation, I attend church, volunteer my time in the community, converse with Haley about the status of her heart, and read silly books to the children about magical kitty cats and construction equipment before bed. But I’d be a liar to say this merits a reward. Because I know that if you were to peer inside my living room on any given night, you might also find me screaming at the children for spilling ketchup on the floor, berating Haley for being on her phone, and distracted, angry, and unkind to everyone, including the dog.
I experience this halfness in other areas, too.
Some of you may look at me and see a published book, a public platform, and a nice headshot. Or a LinkedIn profile filled with embellishments. A new and better job title. A bigger home. A thousand dollars spent attending soccer games or going on fishing trips with my friends. There are days I hold out hope of being named a 40 under 40, even while acknowledging that any award, except maybe a Pulitzer Prize or a MacArthur Fellowship, is ultimately meaningless.
Much of the time, I am not proud of my accomplishments. I am too busy lamenting the lack of clicks and shares, the scuff marks on the wall, the nose-bleed seats and bottom-shelf buys, and envying all the other trees around me that seem to bloom in full. Today, I feel much more like a mess, like a loser, than someone who’s got it all together.
Earlier this week, I was at the mailbox when my neighbor pulled up in his black Tacoma. As usual, he got out of the truck and we spoke about mundane things, including my half-blossoming tree. When Haley and I first moved in, he and his wife had come by with cookies. Cancer took his wife in the fall, and when Haley’s brought him chili he always washes the container and brings it back the next day. He is a quiet, respectable man, probably a church elder, and kind of looks like the clean-cut twin brother of a mall Santa. I am a tsunami, so I’ve had to learn to speak to him in ways that are affectionate but do not overwhelm him. He told me that, years ago, beside this half-dead tree was another the previous owners cut down. They didn’t like dying trees on their property, he said.
But I don’t think I’ll cut my tree down. It’s insane, I know. But I have this strange belief that, even though today its branches are dry and hang sadly, tomorrow they will mysteriously sprout leaves. The broken pieces may even grow back like the antlers on a deer or the tail of a salamander. Preachers say there is a process of regeneration capable of happening inside all of us. And that, in this life, scars cover the skin or exist beneath the surface to tell the story of what we’ve been through. But they don’t define us. All, in time, will be made new.
But I’m not here to preach. I just wanted to talk about this tree. This grotesque, gorgeous, half-dead tree.
Paid subscribers, I’ve got exciting news. Early pieces of my novel, “The Colors of His Brother’s Heart,” will start going out to you in April. Thanks, as always, for your belief in my work.
This actually happened.
The Mexican stranger, Oscar, was painting and listening to mariachi music upstairs when I ran up after Argentina were crowned champions. He held me, and I cried in his arms.
“The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” John 2: 13-16, ESV translation.
And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.’ And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant.” Matthew 21: 12-15, ESV translation.
I can really connect with that feeling of being half alive, half dead. Beautiful, thanks for writing this