Don't be like my willow

I remember hearing that willow trees will bend, not break. That may be true of some willows but it is certainly not the case for the large, rather stately weeping willow in my yard. With each wind, it smirks at me and tosses small fronds across the entire yard. In a true storm with wind and rain, all bets are off. Sometimes it makes a mess with fronds strewn everywhere.  Other times, Mother Nature decides it's time for the tree to shed a limb or two. These are typically deposited into a yard: sometimes mine, sometimes a neighbor's. Sometime M.N. gets a chuckle out of spiking one end of a limb into the ground while resting the other on a power line. Such is the case today. I think the whole "bend, not break" thing is a hoax. Either that or I have a very special willow, one complete with a sense of humor.

The Treehouse

It seemed fitting, somehow, to read Naomi Wolf's The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See on Father's Day. I had heard her interviewed when it was first released in 2005 and filed the title away in some back recess of my mind, deciding to read it in the future. Later, when I stumbled across copy of the newly-released paperback in my local Barnes & Noble, I took it home with me. That was some time ago.

You may know Wolf as the Yale-educated, Rhodes Scholar, feminist author of The Beauty Myth. You may also know that her father was Leonard Wolf, a teacher/author and philosopher of sorts, who found his way through the early days of the American Communist Party to teaching creative writing in San Francisco in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Given her background, you might expect Naomi Wolf's voice to be stridently feminist, unwilling to accept advice from any father figure, even her own. She readily admits to having done that. Finally, in her forties and beginning to take on the role of teacher herself, she asked her father to share with her the lessons he had taught so many students along the way. The lessons take place as three generations work together to build a treehouse for seven-year-old Rosa Wolf.

The lessons are simple yet somehow profound; a few seem hopelessly impractical. You may come away with the sense that there are Quixotic windmills nearby. But that's the magic of this father's lessons - encouraging you to do what you love, be who you are, and allow the "grace of the imagination" to guide you through your life. They are lessons worth reading.