Willow sat down in the school cafeteria with her lunch bag, her body still tense. She was uncharacteristically shaken up by her morning with her dad storming through her mom’s house. She no longer liked seeing her two parents in the same room.
Willow focused on her lunch and uncurled the tinfoil on her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A handwritten note rested right on top of the white bread.
See you by the far fence at recess time!
I love you oodles and oodles of noodle poodles.
—Mom
Willow ate her sandwich in a few excited bites, then ran out to the fence as fast as she could, stumbling only twice. At the fence her mother skipped hellos and leaped straight to the purpose of the meeting.
“I realized this morning that I’ve never taught you how to climb a tree.”
Willow felt a buzz in her blood.
“I also haven’t rescued you from school yet this year! And what kind of daughter of mine can’t climb a tree? Come on, hop this fence. I know a perfect spot.”
And without another thought, Willow wrapped her fingers and toes around the cold chain links and started to climb. Her left leg slipped once, but her mother’s supporting hands and spirit were right there with her as she urged her over the fence and then into the front seat of her car.
Rosie and Willow drove with the windows down to the park around the corner as Willow filled with happiness.
“There it is,” Rosie said, pointing at an enormous willow tree with its waterfall of tiny leaves pouring toward the ground while all of the other trees were bare. Its strong dark trunk radiated into dozens of thin branches that supported thousands of dripping leaves. The afternoon light crawled through its rich green leaves in smooth golden rays that cut through the chill of late autumn. Rosie stood there, so still, admiring the tree. Inhaling deeply. Exhaling deeply. Willow could see a faint cloud of breath form and then dissolve at the tip of her mother’s red lips. Her eyes were so wide and Willow thought she saw a tear forming in one of them.
A force of something moved Rosie from both the outside in and the inside out as she took her daughter’s hand with an unwavering grip and walked toward the tree. Rosie hoisted her daughter onto the lowest branches and helped her with every move to climb deeper into the willow. Right hand, this branch. Left foot, that branch. Willow wrapped her fingers around each branch and pulled her body up, up, up. She pressed her black Converse into the willow tree’s sturdy trunk. Its coarse bark kept her foot in place as she climbed up, up, up some more. It felt so strange for something so rough to feel so safe, but Willow welcomed the tree’s jagged embrace. And oddly the higher Willow climbed, the more comfortable she was feeling. The more those draping leaves shielded her and enveloped her. Created another secret space with her mom. Just like the tree house. But this one was in the daylight.
And finally her mom was just below her. When they had reached the thinnest branches they could sit on, Willow and Rosie stopped climbing. They sat on top of the branches and let their feet dangle weightlessly.
And then Rosie looked at her daughter with a rare expression of seriousness. A rare lift in her earlobes and stillness in her cheeks.
“Did I ever tell you why your father and I named you Willow?”
Willow shook her head side to side.
“Your father and I had our first kiss under a willow tree while we were both living in New York. I think we already loved each other right then. Even though neither of us knew that much about the other one.”
Willow was already surprised at what her mother was telling her. It was hard to imagine them happy together. Her mother so full of energy, loving her father so full of intensity. Her father so full of rules, loving her mother so full of fun.
“And one day, I taught him to skip stones not too far from that willow tree. Imagine that, baby. Your father skipping stones. And me teaching him how to do it!”
Rosie straightened her spine as she shared the anecdote.
Willow nodded as her mother’s words floated out of her mouth, through her ears and out into the abyss beyond the leaves. She kept her eyes locked on her mother’s lips the whole time. With her head gently nodding. With her heart forward. Not moving an inch of her little body. Even as the tip of her nose got cold.
“We lived in an apartment together near there too. Not too far from Central Park in Manhattan. Your father picked it out. It had wallpaper on every wall, and a different knob on every door. I remember when he surprised me. We danced in the entranceway and slept on the floor because we didn’t have any furniture yet. Yes! And he got me a locket. An old golden tarnished locket. I couldn’t believe he picked it out all rusty like that. He even got the address engraved right on the back. I loved that locket so much I hung it right up on the wall,” Rosie said slowly as she continued tracing the memory down the long dark tunnel in her mind.
“And that’s when I told him we were having a baby. That’s the first time he knew about you, noodle.”
A pause. Another little cloud of hot breath meeting cold air.
And then Rosie drifted off somewhere.
“Yeah. The very first time.”
It was no longer clear if Rosie, vacant brown eyes looking out past the dangling leaves, was talking to Willow or herself. To the tree or the air around them. To something else entirely. Because there was a sadness deep inside her mother. A sadness Willow had never seen before.
Rosie blinked and focused her bold eyes back on her daughter. And then she came back to the branches.
“There’s a poem I like by e. e. cummings. He says love ‘is most mad and moonly,’ and I think he’s right. Your father calls it a crazy love poem. But I think he likes it too. Because love is crazy and magical. It’s right and it’s wrong and it’s simple and it’s complicated. But no matter what, you feel it all over, you let it in, and it twists through your insides. I loved your father back then in New York. It was definitely ‘most mad and moonly.’ And I love you and Asher. And that love is the ‘most mad and moonly’ kind too.”
Rosie stared off blankly over Willow’s back and into the leaves, drifting again.
And Willow thought about what it meant to be loved in a “most mad and moonly” way. What it meant to love in a “most mad and moonly” way. In her mother’s fierce and magical way.
Willow looked back at Rosie but didn’t have any words as her mother drifted. Drifted and said things Willow did not understand. As Rosie said things she wasn’t sure anyone could understand. Not even Rosie. But still, Willow sat on that branch and continued nodding slowly. She was still so present, so alive, trying to take Rosie’s words in. But when she looked at her mother, Rosie was barely there. She was off somewhere else in the invisible distance with that rigidity in her body again.
When Willow looked in her mother’s eyes, she knew she had to say something to bring her mother back. She knew her mother needed her to say something to help her back into the cocoon of the leaves of that willow tree. Something to keep her from floating away permanently to that invisible place.
So Willow came up with the truest thing she knew to say.
“I love being up here with you, Mom.”
“Me too, baby. Me too.”
Rosie pulled Willow’s entire body into hers, tucked her chin over Rosie’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Willow had probably been hugged by Rosie one million times, but never like this.
Willow watched her mother soak in all of her attention and all of her love. She could tell how much Rosie loved the way she was listening to her mother up in those willow branches. She could tell how much Rosie loved how wholly Willow breathed in her mother. Here, in these branches, and all the time. With every song, every story, every dance move, every crayon, every kiss. She could tell by the buzzing calm of her mother’s beating heart. The warmth radiating from her as they hugged.
“You and me, Willow. We’ll go back to that apartment in New York City together.”
Rosie stayed like that for a few seconds, breathing deeply, and then pulled her arms even tighter around Willow. There was a heaviness to Rosie’s embrace that Willow hadn’t felt before. It wasn’t the light and breezy intimacy she was used to. It was intense and sharp. But, even still, Willow took it all in. The magic and the love. Just like her mother said to.
“Yeah, baby. Maybe we’ll even stay there in that apartment.”
Rosie’s voice had slowed and moved to a whisper as she kept her arms and heart wrapped around Willow. And then she pulled away and looked straight at her daughter.
“I know you don’t like it at your dad’s. I wouldn’t either. All those rules. All that toughness. You need a relief. I did too.”
A short cold breeze came and rattled the leaves and branches.
“I even still do sometimes. I wish I didn’t. But I do. From your father and from everything.” Rosie hugged her daughter tightly again. And this time, Willow got the sense that her mother was pressing a secret into her. Trying to move it from her body into her daughter’s. But Willow could not decipher what it was.
Rosie looked at the swinging leaves, blinked hard and then continued.
“And one day, when it’s right, we’ll go to that apartment and live happily ever after together. I promise.”
Rosie gripped her daughter so tightly. And Willow hugged her mother tightly back, but she had her eyes open the whole time.
“We can eat candy all day, noodle,” Rosie whispered softly. Her lips were already right at her daughter’s ears.
And Willow made a silent vow that wherever her mom went, she would follow. And eat candy and feel loved. And feel happy.
As Willow hugged her mother half as tightly as her mother was hugging her, she was so close to seeing what was going on behind her mother’s words. So close to seeing the pain and the worry pressing up against the two of them.
* * *
But unfortunately, when Willow made her silent vow, she had gotten it wrong again. Because even though her mother had candy, it didn’t mean Willow would be happy.