{"id":8775,"date":"2025-01-21T18:57:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T18:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/?post_type=article&p=8775"},"modified":"2025-01-21T19:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T19:26:10","slug":"a-year-of-growth","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/a-year-of-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year of Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Fink<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

My youngest daughter does not know<\/p>\n

that each tree ring marks a year of growth<\/p>\n

when she selects a piece of scrap wood<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

from the sawdust and shavings<\/p>\n

that have covered our back patio<\/p>\n

and carries the board inside to color<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the rings revealed by the saw blade,<\/p>\n

my daughter filling the arching semicircles<\/p>\n

until a rainbow appears as her sisters<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

lay other scraps across the floor to make<\/p>\n

a path on which to leap from board to board<\/p>\n

to furniture and back again in a game,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I imagine, every child in history has played,<\/p>\n

the game requiring only the belief<\/p>\n

that the ground is not as solid as it seems,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

that a misstep or tip of balance will lead<\/p>\n

to peril, whether lava or river or canyon below,<\/p>\n

even though, while laughing, they jump again,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

shrugging off each demise, protesting<\/p>\n

only when I collect the boards<\/p>\n

and insist that the world be ordered<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

over their appeals to fairness,<\/em><\/p>\n

the mantra of childhood, to which<\/p>\n

I and every parent I know responds,<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Who says the world is fair? <\/em>mostly resisting,<\/p>\n

though sometimes not, to itemize,<\/p>\n

while wielding a clothes-less Barbie<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

or broken toy like a judge\u2019s gavel,<\/p>\n

every slight from work and love<\/p>\n

and politics both foreign and domestic<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

as the neighbor\u2019s dog howls at the burgeoning<\/p>\n

moon and the kids give each other that look<\/p>\n

meaning, What\u2019s got into dad\u2014all we meant<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

was we were having fun? <\/em>which is when<\/p>\n

I see myself reflected in the glass<\/p>\n

of the patio sliding doors and realize<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

how large I must seem to them,<\/p>\n

large, though clearly not authoritative,<\/p>\n

as the youngest starts spacing<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the boards again behind my back,<\/p>\n

and I lift one and point to the rings<\/p>\n

in the grain, and say, see, this too<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

was once alive, how, though rooted,<\/p>\n

it turned it leaves to the warmth of the sun<\/p>\n

and drew water from the earth, its limbs<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

not unlike yours when you lift the hems<\/p>\n

of your skirts to hop through puddles,<\/p>\n

or wave to me from the treehouse<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

we are building together, a project begun<\/p>\n

before the passing of their grandmother<\/p>\n

though intersecting now with her loss<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

as grief permeates all things, and they ask<\/p>\n

the questions one would expect<\/p>\n

(if she looks down on them from above<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

just as they, from the tree, look down on me)<\/p>\n

and the questions one doesn\u2019t expect<\/p>\n

about how the tree feels holding<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the remains of another tree in its limbs,<\/p>\n

transformed, though it is, to a house,<\/p>\n

and I tell them trees aren\u2019t capable<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

of abstract thought or have feelings<\/p>\n

like we do, though what do I know,<\/p>\n

thinking of Michelangelo\u2019s Pieta,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and Mary, though stone, holding<\/p>\n

her deceased son, and how the body<\/p>\n

is itself a house of memory and love<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and loss, as my wife and I explained<\/p>\n

to our daughters, that the sadness they feel<\/p>\n

is sadness, yes, but also love transformed,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

that grief is love for the one who was lost,<\/p>\n

just as my wife expressed on the day<\/p>\n

before her mother died, after a month<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

of hospice at her mother\u2019s home and the gift,<\/p>\n

my wife said, to be there with her,<\/p>\n

to measure and administer the morphine<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

when the great pain came, when any touch,<\/p>\n

even a blanket, became unbearable,<\/p>\n

to honor the effort at the end for her to stand,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

holding to the walker, and request what would be<\/p>\n

her final bath, and my wife, afterwards,<\/p>\n

drawing a comb through the fineness of her hair,<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

never more beautiful, <\/em>my wife saying<\/p>\n

that night, and again the next day<\/p>\n

even after the workers had come so quickly<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to take her, to gather and remove<\/p>\n

any remaining meds, count every pill<\/p>\n

as her final breath still hung in the air,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and our daughters cried unceasingly<\/p>\n

so that when, that night, we drove away,<\/p>\n

the trees that lined the road seemed to bow<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to the car, to lift their limbs in the breeze,<\/p>\n

the undersides of their leaves lighter<\/p>\n

than the backs, like the palms of hands,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

which, I believed, if they could,<\/p>\n

they would place on our car, on the shoulders<\/p>\n

of my wife, or interweave their limbs<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

as a canopy above us, their petals<\/p>\n

below, and the road would no longer<\/p>\n

be a road but a tunnel, to where it ascended<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I did not know, only that we were<\/p>\n

like breath released at last from the throat,<\/p>\n

becoming the words we were unable to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My youngest daughter does not know<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8779,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[6,1099],"class_list":["post-8775","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-jonathan-fink"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Year of Growth - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/a-year-of-growth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Year of Growth - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My youngest daughter does not know\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/a-year-of-growth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-01-21T19:26:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2025\/01\/Fink-Author-Photo-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2290\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2074\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/a-year-of-growth\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/a-year-of-growth\/\",\"name\":\"A Year of Growth - 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