I woke up much too early this morning. Deep darkness and quiet but my mind racing. Oddly enough I found myself thinking of a person I had come across in my explorations in my personal genealogy. It was a cousin several generations back, someone who lived in the late 1800’s in rural northern Pennsylvania. The name was one of those you often come across in genealogy, one with few hints as to the life they led. Few traces of their existence at all.
At the time, it piqued my curiosity for some reason I couldn’t identify. He was simply a son of the brother of one of my great-great grandparents. As I said, you run across these people by the droves in genealogy, people who show up then disappear in the mist of history, many dying at a young age. But this one had something that made me want to look further. I could find nothing but a mention in an early census record then nothing. No family of any sort. No military service. No land or property. No listings in the cemeteries around where he lived. I searched all the local records available to me and finally came across one lone record. One mention of this name at the right time in the right place, a decade or so from when I lost sight of them.
It was a census record and this person was now in their late 30’s. It was one line with no other family members, one of many in a long list that stretched over two pages. I had seen this before. Maybe this was a jail or a prison. I had other family members in my tree who, when the census rolled around, were incarcerated and showed up for those years as prisoners. So I went to the beginning of the list and there was my answer.
It wasn’t a prison. Well, not in name. It was the County Home. This person was either insane or mentally or physically handicapped and was living out their life in a home when they could or would no longer be cared for by family. It struck me at the time that this was someone who lived and experienced as we all do and who has probably not been thought of in many, many decades. If ever.
This all came back to me in a flash as I laid there in the dark this morning. I began to think of what I do and, as is often the case when I find myself wide awake in the dark at 3:30 AM, began to question why I do it and what purpose it serves in this world. Is there any value other than pretty pictures to hang on a wall? How does my work pertain to someone like my relative who lived and died in obscurity?
In my work, the red tree is the most prominent symbol used. I see myself as the red tree when I look at these paintings and see it as a way of calling attention to the simple fact that I exist in this world. I think that may be what others see as well– a symbol of their own existence and uniqueness in the world.
If I am a red tree, isn’t everyone a red tree in some way? Isn’t my distant cousin living in a rural county home, alone and apart from family, a red tree as well? What was his uniqueness, his exceptionalism? He had something, I’m sure. We all do.
And it came to me then, as I laid in the blackness. Maybe the red tree isn’t about my own uniqueness. Maybe it was about recognizing the uniqueness of others and seeing ourselves in them, recognizing that we all have special qualities to celebrate. Maybe that is the real purpose in what I do. Perhaps this realization that everyone has an exceptionalism that deserves recognition and celebration is why I find it so hard to shake the red tree from my vocabulary of imagery.
Don’t we all deserve to be a red tree, in someone’s eyes?
There was more in the spinning gears this morning but I want to leave it at that for now. It’s 5:30 AM and the day awaits…
Redtree Times 
Over the past year or two, I’ve begunto think about what the world will be like when I’m no longer here. I imagine myself disappearing like a vapor, until I’m no more than the mention you found of your ancestor. And then, even that will be gone.
I can’t think about it too much, because it makes me vertiginous. Dying is one thing. Disappearing is another.
And that makes me ask some of the same questions that were roaming through your mind.
I’ve had people suggesting recently that I should stop with the blogging, already, and publish a book. A couple of people have asked, “Wouldn’t you like to know you’ll be remembered after you’re gone?”
I think about that, and then I think of people who read my blog, including the ones I now know in the “real world”. I think about a woman who emailed to tell me she’d gotten the courage to quit a dead-end job and head in a new direction. There are others like her.
In a way, they’re my “red trees”. If it came to a forced choice between publishing a book and planting a grove, I’ll opt for the trees.
Alway opt for the trees.
I have these thoughts as well. I wonder if we all do?
I have very little family and right now, few traces of my existence. A few records here and there, but that’s about it.
But I imagine myself when I’m gone from this plane haunting the places I walk, hike, and take photos. I see myself a bit as a spirit or ghost watching, maybe protecting, just a vapor someone might see out of the corner of their eye or a strange and gentle breeze tickling their cheek when the trees aren’t moving.
You’ve struck something here. I also find myself thinking about people who seem to have no dreams, don’t seem to do much beyond scrape through their daily existence. Did they ever have aspirations or did life somehow take that from them?
Surely they have something of the red tree about them. Do they have someone who finds them special and beautiful – or is it simply about getting through the day? I truly hope so.
Thank you for sharing such a deep, thought-provoking post.
I wonder also about those who seem to have no dreams and wonder how that came to be, how life had stripped them of their ability to see that they have some control over the course of their life. Thanks for sharing, Bonnie.