Family Tree

When I was in second grade my teacher handed me a large white paper that flapped under the fan and a rainbow of pastel colours as she beamed proudly with her original idea for our next task:

“Draw a family tree!”

So I grabbed all the shades of greens and browns and vomited them out onto my paper as I made trunks and branches and twigs and stems for my larger-than-life and louder-than-sanity family until the pinks of my palms looked like they were covered in moss so after school my mother washed my hands and framed the artwork above my bed.

But now fifteen years later I’m lying on the foot of the bed and staring at the painting and wondering about the family that didn’t stem from those roots. The family that I found in the world I grew into rather than the family I grew out of. The family that I found sitting next to me nervously on the first day of school or the family I found smoking a cigarette outside my dorm. The family that I found inside that dorm. The family that I overlooked for years we spent together but the family that stepped up when my own tree was withering. The family that I found through all these families. The family that I am yet to find and the family that I am yet to create.

How foolish to think that out of this vast world of rivers that flood their banks, and deserts that glow in oranges and golds, and blue oceans with colourful life within, and mountains that rip through the clouds, and the snow at the top that doesn’t melt even in heatwaves, and plains greener than emeralds on royal fingers and valleys deeper than a long sigh of relief – in a world so full, how foolish of me to believe all I get is a tree.