The Reader Travels

With so much magic and wonder on the set of The Lion King, it was the image of the great Baobab tree where Rafiki the Mandrill lived that has stuck with me most. This is a sacred tree of the African savannahs, one that brings shelter and comfort to humans and creatures alike.

I found this tree first when I was searching for African tree cults, back when we were talking about librarian school. The Baobab kept showing up in my searches, so the image was already burned into my brain when I saw her standing there in the middle of the magical set.

Some legends claim that the gods ripped the Baobab up by her roots, turned her upside down and planted her with her toes stuck up in the air. Her branches are barren nine months out of the year, and her belly is large, a womb for creatures to live and grow.

A part of me felt like it was the magic of that tree that reverberated through Rafiki’s voice and down through my toenails. Remember the name of the Baobab tree, but also know the name of Phindile Mkhize, South African singer extraordinaire. I’m totally buying her next album.

Once upon a time, I thought I might want to be a librarian when I grew up. I enrolled in graduate school and started night classes, pleased to be learning something new. I didn’t really like my first teacher because he told me most of the people in his class would figure out they didn’t really want to be librarians after all. It was like that speech they give people as freshmen going into college, “Look to your left, then look to your right. Only one of you will still be here in four years.” In this case, I wasn’t the one.

In my second semester, I had a teacher who stood in front of the class dreaming she was someplace else, namely Africa. She wore African dresses and braids in her hair, and she spoke to us of her recent stay in Nigeria. I liked her.

The class was an introduction to reference, dabbling in the vast and varied reference materials you can use in a library. She used the example of tree cults in one of her lectures, trying to teach us how you might use the library to find out what a tree cult is.

Sadly, I was more interested in the topic of tree cults than I was in the topic of reference materials used to find out about them. If I recall correctly, tree cults are cultures that assign some spiritual quality to trees, some of which credit trees with the beginnings of human life. Trees are often personified, providing wisdom to those who would hear them. She cited West Africa as an area of tree worshipers, and I wanted to know more about Africa, more vast and varied than the reference materials she was trying to tell me about.

In the years that have passed since then, the Internet has exploded as a reference resource, but as I search on Yahoo! for “tree cults” I’m still finding the materials are limited. If I really want to learn more, I’m sure I’ll want to just ask a reference librarian.

In Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, Lissie is an old woman who tells stories of her past lives. Although she has lived in the southeastern United States all her life, many of her memories are from Africa.

She remembers living in the African trees in one of her earliest incarnations. She remembers living on the ground in a later life, and she remembers, “the chopping down of our hair,” as if their hair were a mighty tree. She remembers fellow Africans dealing in slaves. She remembers the priests, “Of course they were feared, if not respected, and of course the fear looked like respect, I guess.”

I played flute in my parents’ Catholic church after I graduated from college. Like many others I was disillusioned with the Church after early feelings of oppression and some bit of higher education. Anyway, I needed a musical outlet, and the Church provided that for me, so I was prepared to set my disillusionment aside.

But I remember the last mass I went to. A missionary priest had traveled to Texas to perform the sermon for us that day. He was there to ask for donations to support the Church’s missionary work in places like Cuba, the Dominican Republic and West Africa. He spoke of West Africa saying, “The Muslims aren’t there yet, and they’ll use force if necessary.” I was so disgusted with the hypocrisy that I never went back.

My first introduction to Tom Robbins was through his book Skinny Legs and All, and it changed my life, taking me on a very unexpected journey and giving me a direction to follow for years to come.

Tom Robbins set me free. I figured, if he can give a bunch of inaminate objects personalities and purpose beyond their original function; if he could make a can of beans and a sock and a spoon and a stick and a conch shell speak; if he can take them all on a pilgramage to the holy land, then why can’t I grant a magical life to a magnolia tree?

Not that as a writer I could ever compare myself to the hilarious and mystical Mr. Robbins, but I can still be inspired by him.

Even though my grandmother had always challenged me to write her family history, I knew I could never have enough facts to make it more than fiction. I wanted to use the magnolia tree as a symbol of her life, of the generations of women in her family. I never imagined I could make the tree more than a symbol, but the conch shell and the painted stick, those wielders of magic and protectors of ancient religions, have granted her real life.

As I start to shop for publishers, I do wonder, though, who will be my audience. Lovers of family drama who are also fans of Tolkien’s ents? It’s a thin line, but I know you’re out there.

One of my dearest friends shared her copy of Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar with me a few years ago, knowing how I was consumed with thoughts of trees and memories of past lives.

Walker’s character Lissie takes us on a journey through history and pre-history. Her memory is long, for “Lissie means ‘the one who remembers everything.’” And she does.

Lissie remembers Africa, and many African countries have a history of tree cults, where trees are thought to bear some life-giving spirit or divinity. Lissie talks of “the chopping down of our hair,” as if our hair were mighty trees. She calls to me.

More recently, my friend shared another connecting link through the music of Jill Scott. The song, “Do You Remember,” on Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds, Vol. 1, also ties in this concept of remembering past lives. J-I-L-L remembers Africa, too, building “sand castles in the Serengeti.”

I don’t remember past lives, but I feel connected to all who have come before me and those who will come after, like the roots of trees are connected to the earth, their branches to the sky.

About fifteen years ago I was helping my mother chop down a magnolia tree in her back yard. The poor tree was crammed into this tiny space between the house and the concrete deck surrounding a swimming pool. It was a mercy killing as much as it was a defense of the pool and the house’s foundation.

That same day we received a phone call from my uncle. My grandmother had fallen ill and had to be hospitalized. She had been grief stricken following the death of her husband a few years earlier, and there were speculations about a suicide attempt. She would never come home again, though her body yet lives.

In my mind, the killing of the tree, and the demise of my grandmother were connected. My grandmother had always told me, “Ann Marie, you should write our family history.” But I had waited too long. I could no longer ask her about the stories. She could no longer tell me. And my mother had always been strangely bereft of a memory. She couldn’t tell me either.

I wasn’t going to give up, though. The “family history” would have to be a “family fiction,” and the magnolia tree would lend her vast memory where my family had none.