A Tree that Arrives at its Withering

A few days after I listen to a woman say she wants to be like a tree, I see the word everywhere. When I come across it again, it is in a poem by Nicole Lachat: I wish you growth, which is to say/ I hope you become more tree/ every day. It’s easier to become fire. I pause to read it again and again. I think of the groundedness in the imagery, the quiet endurance, the sense of being anchored, rooted, firm. I think of the branches and their sprouting, how that stretching and cracking is in itself a painful act, and yet, there is no other way. I think of time, waiting that goes on forever, a hundred sunsets and sunrises, a million forgettable moments cupped into a day, a month, a year. All that restlessness, itching idleness, the desperate urge to be something, do something. The lush green will come at night. The buds will open and bloom like a promise. But first the seed, the lonely hours of stillness, the creeping roots, the urgent breaking through of the hard earth. And even then, after a sun’s kiss and a rain dance, here you are rising from the ground—not quite reaching the skies, not quite anywhere yet. Simply here. Beautifully here. Contentedly here. Gracefully here. Clumsily here.

Thirty years. It feels silly and unsure. Like a foreign language on my tongue. I know there’ll be no fireworks. Nothing grandiose to mark the miracle that this is. And perhaps no marking be necessary except for my own knowing, my own recognition of this wonder. Here I am. Still in this body. Still singing the same lovely tune of my breath. My God, how bewildering the realm of existence. Easy to lose sight of it until it is a second too late. One thing is certain: that kind of amnesia and chronic passivity, I have no patience for. This singular life is what I have, and what a great loss it would be to not drench myself fully into the wild condition of living. Yes, to spin myself wild even in its despair and terror. To move through the world unraveling my life in such a way that my last breath leaves nothing in its wake. A tree that arrives at its withering graciously, having flourished, having tilted its crown to shed off all its leaves.

Something I am proud of: Showing up in the classroom each week. I still find myself in disbelief sometimes. When I remember the timid and fearful girl I was and how speaking in public seemed impossible, I can’t shake off the sense that I am watching a different version of me do these things. I remember it all: how my body shook sitting in a classroom at Chapman, forcing myself to think, to roll words off my tongue without effort. How I was so sure everyone could feel the quiver of my palpitations. In the fall of 2025, I taught Post-colonial Literature for the first time. I taught it nervously and excitedly. We read Achebe, Gordimer, Lessing, Lahiri, and Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, which broke my heart. I was floored by my students’ eagerness to learn, our ready admission of biases and self-centeredness, and the care we took to say what it is that plagued our minds, the courage to carry different ideas and questions, the graciousness to listen without becoming hardened by the carelessness of others, and the unknown coldness hidden in our remarks. In the classroom, I learn to love, to forgive, to laugh, to confess, to build, and never tear down.

Something I enjoyed: Reading. Well, I have always enjoyed reading, but I got to do more of it this year, and it was just spectacular. This is also the year I tried audiobooks and decided they’re not as bad as I thought! Some books I find myself still thinking about: The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali, The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes, If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, God Help the Child by Toni Morrison. Tara Westover’s Educated is phenomenal. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini—somehow, I simultaneously wanted to stop reading these two books and yet, couldn’t seem to stop myself. I dragged myself tirelessly to their end, and I am glad I did. They are memorable. I don’t know what it was that made it feel like work, but it was meaningful work nonetheless.

Something to do more of: Writing. I have written less and less this year, and all I can say is, I do not like its absence in my life one bit. It feels like a wrongful detachment. Like a twisted joint jutting out. It is as if I’m walking in the wrong size of shoes. Awkward and limping and conscious of the spectacle. I am, and will forever be, in desperate need of words and stories, in whatever form they come. I want to come back to the page. I want to touch words again. I want to dream and play and make up fascinating characters. I’ll face the daunting blank page and struggle through a stubborn draft all over again if it means I get to write, even if badly and slowly. And I really don’t like the daunting blank page. I want to journal more. I want more quiet moments of sitting by myself with my thoughts and a notebook. I miss it dearly. I am sluggish without it. I am absent-minded and a poor observer when I am not writing. It is like I am sitting in a dark, airless room. I can’t even see the window to push it open. I can’t even see the shape of my hands. It is like I am just waiting for something to happen to me. To hit me in the face like a gust of wind. May the new days be filled with more words. The music of language. The weaving and spinning of verbs and nouns, the sweet meditation on syllables, and the persistent mulling over ways lines move and breathe and pause. The crispness of paper. A pen in my hand like a brush. There I go to a mysterious place only I know, painting painting painting.

Yes, I know that this day, too, will pass quietly and ordinarily, as all days do and as they should. I know very little will change—the days will unfold in their usual rhythm, there’ll be work to do and places to be, there’ll be many uncountable losses and a magnitude of gains. I shall know the heights of joy intimately, and yes, sink into the deep end of sorrow too. I shall live finding beauty in the ordinary, running towards stillness, getting closer and closer to the child within, even as my body changes and takes on the evidence of aging, of living. Thirty years. How improbable. How miraculous. Now, knowing all this - the astounding stakes and power involved in rolling the dice of my beating heart, in shortening or lengthening the river of sentence that is my life - how shall I live? Shouldn’t I, with everything in me, cling to hope and sing a song of thanks?