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In the front yard of my
grandmother’s house in
Hattiesburg, Miss., there was a giant
tree. My cousin Judy and I played beneath it as children. We
couldn’t have been more than 3 and 4 years old, respectively. It
was the first tree we ever climbed.
In my memory it is a magnolia, with a massive trunk and
smooth, thick branches low enough for us to sit on and dangle
our legs under a canopy of leaves that inspired the beginnings of
our world of make-believe.
When my husband and I retired and built our cottage by the sea
after 30 years of living in a dry western climate filled with scrub
oak and ponderosa pines, I had to have a magnolia. The landscap-
er asked where I wanted it placed, and I naively replied, “Where I
can see it.” They planted it about five feet from our back porch, in
a bed of azaleas. It was just a stick then. But in the past 15 years it
has grown to almost four stories high and 20 feet across.
We had to prune the lower limbs because they were invad-
ing the house. It has big, shiny dark-green leaves that fall off
in great numbers during every month of the year. They fall on
the grass and the walks and the flower beds. They are thick and
pointed, and they get stuck in the azaleas (which don’t bloom
anymore because the magnolia shades them) and must be
clawed out by hand.
One time last spring we decided to just let the leaves build
up, hoping they would eventually disintegrate, but when they
got knee-deep after a couple of weeks we relented and raked
them into a pile the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. They filled nine
trash bags, which we hauled to the curb.
All that, and our magnolia blooms
only once a year.
I have created a monster, I thought,
as I looked up at this icon of the American South, distant cousin
to that old giant in Mississippi, and wondered if I could bear
to cut it down. I wondered what my grandmother would think
about that.
And then I saw it – the first blossom of the season, close and
low, huge by flowering-tree standards, just opening, as if to
infinite possibilities. It was as if the big green leaves were ten-
tatively holding out a peace offering, a most precious treasure,
pure and white and perfectly formed, hinting at a beauty of the
spirit untouched by age or time.
I thought about how the magnolia provided the shade that
cooled our porch and kept the sun out of our eyes in the after-
noon, how its branches housed the birds that sang in the sum-
mer night. There was safety in those branches for the mocking-
bird and the whippoorwill. I could hear the rustle of those leaves
in the wind, which, by their constant falling, signal constant
renewal. They were leaves like the ones that had once sheltered
little girls sitting on the precipice of a lifelong sisterhood.
As the scent of that perfect blossom filled the air, I realized that
anything that brings such beauty into this world deserves to live
in it. A pearl of wisdom revealed itself to me: Some things in life
are messy, but sometimes, they are worth it. So I stood there and
made my peace with that magnolia. I knew that I would go on
raking its leaves – without complaint, and perhaps even joyfully.
I believe my grandmother would be pleased.- Joy Thompson Dingee
IT CROWDS THE HOUSE. IT SHEDS
LEAVES. IT BLOOMS ONCE. AND YET ...MAGNOLIAS BLOOM IN BOSTON’S BACK BAY. JOHN NORDELL/TCSM/FILE
ESSAYMaking peace with my magnolia
I have created a monster,
I thought, as I looked at the tree.
But could I bear to cut it down?