Three Sisters

When my grandparents moved out of the house they'd lived in for as long as I could remember, I couldn't imagine it belonging to anyone else.

That little house, sixty-eight miles from mine, had been the one constant in my childhood.

I attended eleven schools in twelve years, all before high school, so we lived everywhere from Louisiana to California.

Every time I learned a new address, there was one that never changed.

My grandparents' address on Laplace Street in Chalmette.

Three months before I was born, Hurricane Betsy forced my family to evacuate that little house.

My mother was pregnant with me at the time, and she told me the harrowing evacuation story so many times that it became one of my earliest memories of their home.

I know that's impossible.

I was there, but not really there.

Still, I can see it as clearly as if I'd witnessed it myself.

In a way, that house became part of my story before I was.

It was the house where every memorable holiday seemed to happen.

The house where the smell of garlic, tomato sauce, and Italian food greeted you before you entered the front door.

Most, if not all, of my happiest childhood memories lived there.

Behind the house stood a magnificent pecan tree.

Every fall, my grandfather would hand me a little brown paper bag with the top folded over. We'd wander beneath its branches, gathering pecans that had fallen into the grass.

He'd crack them open while we sat on the back steps, and we'd eat them together.

I don’t remember what we talked about.

I only remember sitting there with him.

When my grandparents decided to move to a retirement community in 2001, I looked for a way to hold on.

When I saw the tiny pecan seedlings scattered below the tree, barely two inches tall, sprouting from nuts that had fallen the year before, I asked if they could be replanted.

My grandfather said, “Yes!” and went to his old rickety shed to retrieve a well-worn shovel.

He and my husband carefully dug up six of them, and we brought them home.

I planted them in my backyard.

Not all of them survived.

Three did, only after I had driven orange-painted wooden stakes into the ground around them to prevent my assassin husband from rolling over them on his riding lawnmower.

I watched them grow.

For years, I proudly told people I had my grandparents' pecan tree growing in my yard.

Then a man, smugly laughing at my ignorance, informed me, with all the enthusiasm of a man correcting a child, that because I hadn't grafted the trees, they weren't actually the same tree.

He was technically right.

I kind of hated him for it.

Eventually, I got over it.

Now I simply call them the Three Sisters.

They're daughters of my grandparents’ tree, I suppose.

Or close enough. (And please, no one burst my bubble again. Let me remain happily ignorant!)

When Hurricane Katrina forced much of my family from their homes,

my grandparents were two of the people who stayed with us.

By then, the sisters had grown enough that you could tell they were going to make it.

One afternoon, my grandfather stood looking at them.

He couldn't believe I'd done it.

That I'd thought, years earlier, to preserve something from the home where our family had gathered for generations.

Tears filled his eyes.

Older men have a way of crying without apology.

They’ve learned that some things are too meaningful to hide behind pride.

"My trees," he said through tears. "You saved my trees."

He wasn't looking at three young pecan trees.

He was looking at home.

That day, I saw them through his eyes.

Twenty-five years have passed.

The Three Sisters now tower above my yard.

They shade our swimming pool, cool our home, and stretch toward the sky with the confidence that only maturity can produce.

Let me tell you, these things now produce more pecans than I can ever use!

I mean, who needs three pecan trees on a 1-acre lot?

The funny thing is that I didn't plant them because I wanted pecans.

I planted them because I wanted my grandparents.

Or at least something that would honor what they meant to me.

A piece of their home.

The safest part of my childhood.

A reminder that some places don't have to disappear completely.

Well, I got all that and then some.

Recently, our family drove back to see the old neighborhood.

Katrina, that hateful wench, eventually claimed my grandparents' former house.

Where it once stood is now an empty lot.

Honestly, though, it had already begun disappearing, even before the storm.

Once my grandparents moved away, the house somehow stopped being itself.

The walls were still standing.

The roof was still there.

But the soul of the place had gone with them.

You could feel it simply driving past.

Apparently, even a remembered address isn't what makes a home.

Love is.

And lucky for me, love can be planted.

Or replanted.

Every morning when I step outside, the Three Sisters are there.

To anyone else, they're simply three big, beautiful pecan trees.

To me, they are my grandparents’ love, still growing, still protecting.

They are strength rooted deeply enough to withstand storms.

They are quiet stability.

They are generosity, giving far more than they ever ask in return.

They block the wind before it reaches my home.

They cast shade over long summer afternoons.

Even now, somehow, they make me feel protected.

As if my grandparents are still standing watch.

The greatest inheritance my grandparents ever gave me wasn't a house.

It was the feeling of home.

A feeling that followed me from Laplace Street to my own backyard.

And somehow, every morning, beneath the shade of the Three Sisters, I still feel them.

Some things are worth preserving.

Some things outlive the houses they came from.

And thank God...

Some things never change.