Month of Bridges
There is a path at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens that winds down the steep side of a cozy little ravine to a wooden bridge spanning a stream. A plaque has been set into one of the handrails, bearing this inscription:
Side by side my mother and I stood on that bridge, holding between us the silence that connects people who share a common grief. Above us, beyond the little sanctuary of nature in the midst of this vast city, the sky was a gauzy patchwork of thin clouds and hopeful, pastel blue. Stark against the watercolor backdrop, a magnificent sycamore spread her patchwork branches, lower trunk wrapped in vines like a form-fitting skirt. Her sister stood beside her, slightly shorter and without the lacy clothing. This was their valley, I could tell. An appropriate place for a bridge with such an inscription.
In mythology, sycamores are said to connect the worlds of the living and the dead. According to Egyptian myth, it is just such a pair of sycamores that stand at the Eastern gate of heaven, between whom Ra, the sun, appears each morning1. The First Nations peoples used the American Sycamore (as we call it now) medicinally, to treat colds and coughs, among other bodily ailments. It is said to symbolize protection and longevity because of it’s strong root system and ability to adapt and survive in harsh and windy climates2. It also symbolizes hope, clarity, divinity, and fertility3. Because of it’s pronounced ability to reduce pollutants in the air, the sycamore is prized by nature lovers the world over, and is a favorite choice for planting in cities. All of these facts I learned later, of course. At the moment all I could do was gaze up in reverence, appreciating the sanctuary guarded by these two gracious beings, and the quiet moment that was stretching out beneath their branches, overseen by a waxing gibbous moon.
A laughing moon, my mother called it. Like a mouth open wide in mirth. Above and to the left of the trees it hung, pale in the afternoon sky. The sycamore is also called a moon tree, for astronaut Stuart Roosa, a former smoke jumper for the forestry service, who carried 500 tree seeds into space on the Apollo 14 moon mission to see if they would still grow after being exposed to the radiation of space. Most of the seeds did germinate and were planted around the country, but were not well documented. Fifty-one sycamores, more than any other type of tree and most of them still alive, are suspected of being “moon trees.”4 After Roosa’s death, a sycamore was planted at his grave site as a memorial to his lunar experiment.
It was under just such a moon that my youngest daughter was born, my hope and fear entwined in the act of releasing her from my womb after our middle daughter was stillborn. The moon looked to me like a pregnant belly. I watched it all the way to the birthing center. Losing a baby is another bridge between my mother and me. This week my youngest brother would have been twenty. Of all my family, only we two honor his birthday by speaking his name, grieving the memories we never made, the family that we would have been if he had lived to join us. My sister filled the silence too. Earlier this week we found out that my husband’s youngest sister, the same age as my sister, Rose, who died in 2020, was accepted into a university for this fall. It was a bittersweet moment for us: happy, of course, for her; sad that my sister never got to experience this rite of passage. Rose had such ambition, like a ladder to heaven. She wanted to graduate years ahead of schedule, just like my husband, her inspiration. The early graduation, for her, was from earth instead of high school. She would have reveled in this almost-spring day. She would have appreciated these trees. She would have laughed and made us laugh. Even the moon.
We are all bridges, it seems. For those of us who have loved and lost, a part of ourselves becomes frozen in the past, forever the people we were in the photographs alongside our beloved dead. Our love for them forms a bridge we cannot cross, extending into the misty beyond, beckoning and foreboding at the same time. We are here and they are elsewhere. We love them, but that love has nowhere to go but…out, up. Smoke from an offering floating into the mirror of the sky. Can they see us? we wonder. Can they feel our love, our remembrance? Do they remember us? Grief is the one-way bridge that connects us, not only to our loved ones, but to our past selves. Like ghosts they follow us, sometimes comforting and sometimes eerie. In the growing light of a dawning season, this grief feels much different than it did in the fall. A waxing moon is for burgeoning, for dynamic growth and rapid change. The sycamore, spanner of worlds, is resilient and hopeful, a promise of protection and perpetuation. It is an enduring symbol of transformation, turning bad into good.
My mother and I leaned on the inscribed railing of the bridge, listening to the murmuring of the stream fill our silence. I came of age in the turbulent aftermath of my brother’s death. In the two decades since, most of the bridges between us have burned, one way and another. Most, but not all. Together we turned away from the bridge, and as one our eyes fell on a charming bench set into the hillside with a very small pine tree casting it’s fringe of needles like a canopy above it. I remarked that it was a perfect spot for a picture, so we sat and took a selfie, the first I can remember taking, just the two of us. Her scarf matched my shirt, like we planned it. Our two smiles said we are family.
The month of March is another bridge, one foot in winter, one in spring. It is a contrary month, the weather at the beginning and ending of the month usually opposites, which gave rise to the folk saying: “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” My mother repeated this every year of my life, and so now I do, too. Today’s mildness forebodes lion-fierce weather at the end of the month, but I wouldn’t trade the sunshine today for anything. Poised at the verdant edge of spring, I feel my own energy rising like sap. Behind me stretches a bridge, marker of a thousand graves, an anchor that grounds me and only weighs me down when I choose to let it. Like rain, the love we send out to our lost ones returns to nurture us in the waxing of the season. Drawing upon the roots that have sustained us through the dark, we rise.
Clair, Mae. “Mythical Monday: Folklore of the Sycamore Tree.” From the Pen of Mae Clair. April 28, 2014. https://maeclair.net/2014/04/28/mythical-monday-folklore-of-the-sycamore-tree-by-mae-clair/ Accessed: March 1st, 2023.
Brunton, Susan. “Sycamore Tree Symbolism and Facts That Will Surprise You.” Spiritual Unite. https://www.spiritualunite.com/articles/sycamore-tree-symbolism/ Accessed: March 1st, 2023.
TreeSymbolism.com. “#56 Sycamore Tree: Meaning and Symbolism.” https://www.spiritualunite.com/articles/sycamore-tree-symbolism/ Accessed: March 1st, 2023.
Williams, David R. “The ‘Moon Trees’.” Nasa. Last updated: December 16, 2022. https://www.spiritualunite.com/articles/sycamore-tree-symbolism/ Accessed: March 1st, 2023.