Sideways

Last night, I slept sideways in bed and equally sideways in my mind.  I awakened once, feeling slightly disorientated, discovering my windows and digital clock seemingly in the wrong places.  Once awake, I found myself thinking about Gus, the old man who lived in a rundown log cabin behind our house when I was a small boy.  Giant cottonwood trees stood all around his cabin and tall grass and weeds thrived nearby.  Gus always wore a black Fedora hat and dark jacket as he sat in a wooden kitchen chair just outside his door on the hottest of summer days.  One summer day, when I went to visit with him in the shade of those cottonwood trees, he told me that the trees were no taller than me and skinny as a broom handle when he planted them as a young man.

Back then, I struggled greatly to imagine Gus young and those trees small.  Last night, sideways in this world, I imagined Gus planting those trees.  Only through the approach of my own old-age have I mapped the way back to that time.

Leaving for work this morning, I backed my truck under the splay of branches from the Mayday tree that I planted so small I was able to toss a blanket overtop to protect it from the first late spring snow the tree endured.   

--Mitchell Hegman