Behind Locked Doors

            The hill behind the meadow, where the druids celebrate the passing of seasons, carries the circle of granite stones like a headband around a bald spot during the dry month.  Ivy and gnarled oaks growing down the sides are covered with gray dust. The only color on the hill comes from flower petals and piles of seeds left as offerings on the stones.

            There are three stone circles, circles within circles.  Sometimes looking at them, they seem to move, one turning the others like the wheels inside an old pocket watch.  I don’t know what causes this sensation, but each time it happens I am grateful.  Energy moves in this place.  I can feel it.

            “Energy in motion equals this,”   the man in the gray suit tells me.  He writes an equation in the dust with a stick:  E + motion = Emotion.  He is a doctor.  He likes this place.  He says he comes here sometimes to remember and sometimes to forget.

            Close to the largest stone,  which is often set with candles and incense like an altar, a broad leafed tree extends branches across the stone in a blessing gesture.  I like the little tree.  When the leaves grow limp from thirst I carry water in a plastic bottle to the tree each time I walk my dog. 

            The tree responds.  The leaves grow firm again, new ones appear and then drop shaped flower buds.  The man in the gray suit smiles at me.  He will help with the watering.  He passes the tree on his way to work because he leaves his car behind the hill and walks to the hospital.  “I need the walk as much as he does,” the man in the gray suit laughs and pats the dog on his rump.  “Besides I like to tend a tree.  There is no garden where I live.”

            Neither of us knows what species of tree we are watering nor what kind of flowers to expect.  The tree will have to surprise us.

It does.  Four of the buds burst into flowers at the same time, sun yellow bells, each longer than my hand, ring with brightness.

            The golden blooms are an amazing sight, spilling color and lightness across the hill and into my thoughts.  Gazing at the tree with the wonderful blooms brings much happiness for three days.

            On the fourth day the sight of the tree early in the morning makes me cry.  The tree is broken, doubled over as if in pain, leaves and flowers brush the dust.  The trunk is cracked and splintered where it was forced to bend, the bark torn and shredded where branches were twisted and ripped away.

            The man in the gray suit helps me make a splint for the tree.  We use plastic bags from my pocket and his tie to hold the splint in place.  I will come back with duct tape for a tighter wrap later.  The man in the gray suit crushes six aspirins between rocks and sprinkles them around the base of the tree before giving it water.  “For shock,” he says.  “I don’t know what else to do.”

            Wounded and stripped of all branches, yet the little tree rallies.  Within two days the leaves in the crown loose their limpness and two of the buds open into flowers.  I dare hope all is not lost.

            But a week after I found the tree broken, it is broken again.  This time there is nothing left to splint together.  I am beyond tears.

            The man in the gray suit sits down on a rock beside me.  He does not speak for a long time.  Then he says quietly:  “Let me tell you a story.  The top floor of a hospital was set apart for mentally ill, for deeply disturbed, disturbing patients.  Some of them were never visited.  There was a nurse who cared about them.  One day she decided to enter a room she had been told not to enter.  The door was kept locked, food was put on a tray through  a slot.

            The nurse heard crying behind the door.  She unlocked the door and entered the room.  “Can I do something for you?,” she asked the one who lived there.

            The patient lunged at the nurse and slapped her face.  It stunned the nurse and brought tears to her eyes.  She shook herself.  Then she asked, “Is there something else I can do for you?”

            The man in the gray suit touches my shoulder briefly.  Then he leaves.