“Once upon a time there was an owl named Isabel, and she lived in a willow tree in the backyard of a little girl named Natalie.”
opening line of every isabel story
I don’t remember when I started telling Isabel stories to my daughter. She was little, maybe two or three. We got the name from a Natalie Merchant song called “The Adventures of Isabel,” and I got the owl because owls are my favorite type of bird, and the adventures I invented happened mostly at night (these being bedtime stories), so it felt only natural that Isabel should be an owl.
Isabel lived in the willow tree in our backyard (which I have very recently discovered is not a willow tree at all but a type of cherry tree… more on this later). Every story started with this fact, and every night (at least in the early days), my daughter would look out the window at the willow tree. Of course, Isabel was never seen because it was nighttime and Isabel would be off doing owl things, but we pretended she lived there. I pretended she lived there. My daughter often asked, “Does Isabel really live in the tree?”
“I think she does,” I would answer. It was, looking back, a cruel answer.
Isabel had a number of friends, from the fireflies that dotted the lawn at dusk, to a wolf named Wilbert and a beaver named Benny. The opening patter (after introducing Isabel and her tree) always included the line, “She had lots of adventures and lots of friends,” so naturally, I had to invent some friends for her to have.
Behind our house is a wetland, and we can’t really see much of it because of the aspens and pines that block our view, but we know it’s back there, and it became the perfect setting for all of Isabel’s animal friends to inhabit. Who knows, maybe a silly, slightly cowardly wolf really does live in that wetland. It’s quite possible a beaver lives there too. And deer. For sure there are deer. And snails and muskrats and all manner of creatures who showed up over the years to be Isabel’s friends.
Even the star bear must exist in the constellations. Isabel has flown into the heavens and met with the stars. She’s been a lot of places.
If only I could remember them all.
I’ve often told myself to write down the Isabel stories. It was always my plan. To preserve them. To remember them. Why else do I write down so much except to help myself remember?
But as the years go by, and my daughter is no longer as little as she once was, the Isabel stories have faded. I remember afterimages, little turns of phrase, a few rhymes and rhythms. But I don’t remember them all in their fullness. They are piecemeal stories now. And I reprimand myself for not writing them down when they were full and vital and alive.
I fear it may be too late. What if I can’t remember them all?
There’s a sense of desperate urgency to this because the Isabel tree must be cut down.
This is not a metaphor.
It really needs to be cut down. It’s four trunks all split off from each other, and one of those trunks is breaking away and rot is setting in, so the tree service guys have told us either we cut it down ourselves or nature will take it out for us. Storms have been bad lately. High winds. Random tornadoes out of nowhere. The tree wouldn’t fall on our house, but it may fall on our power lines and back fence. If nature takes it down, it will cause destruction.
That’s not what we want. Not for the tree. Not for us.
So we said, “Okay.” We told the tree guys to cut it down, to leave a bit of its trunks so we can try to grow button mushrooms, to stack the wood so we can use it for bonfires. We’ll remember the tree and try to honor it.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to see it go. It doesn’t mean I’m not crying as I type these words.
“What about Isabel?” my ten-year-old daughter asked me the other day when we told the kids about cutting down the tree.
What about Isabel? I thought.
“She’ll be alright,” I answered. “She’ll fly to a new tree.”
But I knew what my child was really asking. What about our stories? What about the opening to each of those tales? How can we tell another Isabel story without the willow tree?
Once upon a time there was an owl named Isabel who lived in a willow tree in the backyard of a little girl named Natalie…
Turns out it wasn’t a willow tree. The tree guys told us it was a cherry tree. We were wrong all these years.
Maybe that’s a metaphor. In my stories, Isabel always lived in a willow tree. We were wrong about the tree in our backyard, but we weren’t wrong about the story tree. The tree in our backyard was always more than just a tree. It was part of a story, and the story isn’t bound by what’s growing out of our yard, it isn’t bound by what is ephemeral, by what lives for a span and then dies. The story exists outside of that finite realm. It is more than a cherry tree succumbing to rot.
It is a love letter, a bond, a world created between me and my daughter that can never be cut down. It exists even if the real tree no longer stands. And it exists even if I have forgotten to write it down.
The Isabel story lives in my heart. In my daughter’s heart. Two trunks growing out of the same source.
I can hear the chainsaws cutting outside my window. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t heartbroken.
I might not remember every word and jot of the old Isabel stories, but I remember enough. And I still have time to write down what I remember. As the tree is hewn into firewood, I can replant its stories into a new soil. I can do what I’d always planned on doing.
The old stories don’t have to be forgotten, even if what I remember is piecemeal. I can write them down, and Isabel can, indeed, fly to a new tree. The real willow tree. The tree my daughter and I both share. Two trunks, growing from one source.
