When my husband and I moved from our farm in Chickamauga to our house in town, I was sad to say goodbye to the huge garden spot our neighbor had tilled for us. For years, my husband had planted and weeded and tended and watered increasingly exotic varieties of tomatoes, basil, okra, eggplant, squash, peas, and peppers. In our tiny kitchen, I struggled to process mountains of basil into pesto and tomatoes into bases for soups and sauces. Needless to say, we ate well.

We were able to continue growing vegetables at our new house in town, but on a much smaller scale. And then we moved again, to a house deep in the woods, where there are too few hours of direct sunlight to sustain more than the occasional determined tomato. Our most abundant crop is deer ticks.

This past summer we decided to clear out a few trees, to protect our roof from falling limbs and to let in some sunlight, which would be a shot in the arm to the remaining [thousands of] trees and the foliage struggling to survive beneath them. For weeks before the arborist came, we walked around the yard pointing out trees we thought needed to go. Most were dead. And not just sort of, secretly dead. Really, really dead, as in cracked and peeling trunks and freakishly bare limbs that looked like the fingers of someone’s elderly arthritic aunt scratching helplessly at the air.

If you yourself have ever grown an obsession out of something previously inconsequential to your life, then you will understand what happened next: I started to see dead trees everywhere. There were lots of them on my street, I noticed, while walking the dogs. And more on the streets just beyond ours, I saw, driving into town. Soon, dead trees were almost all I saw: they lined my route to downtown, they populated the medians across town, they dotted the sides of the mountains, colorless, leafless, and ghost-like.  Had they always been there? How had I not noticed them before?

You can guess where this is going. Soon I was carrying around a chainsaw in my mind, and imagining myself clearing out the deadwood tree by unfortunate tree. This was the same mind that, starting at age six, carried around a horse, and imagined myself on its back, galloping beside whatever car I was riding in.

In my tree fantasy, I waded through thick forests down to the river’s edge to level sickly oaks with drowned roots. I stopped the car (and by extension, the horse) and sprinted across busy highways to fell the decrepit pines in the medians. There was no dead tree safe from my imaginary chainsaw. It was an odd and profoundly satisfying mission.

And then I made the mistake of telling my husband about all of it: the dead trees I suddenly saw everywhere, the chainsaw of my imagination, how I was singlehandedly clearing the world of useless branches and restoring beauty to the mountains and the highways. This is like telling Freud about your “innocuous” dream, and then realizing you are going to prison because he knows what it really means.

“What’s the deadwood you’re wanting to clear out of your life?” my husband asked, without blinking, possibly without even waking up, that’s how good he is at making meaning out of air.

I tried to laugh it off. Everyone sees dead trees everywhere, I thought. Unless I am like the kid in the M. Night Shyamalam movie, The Sixth Sense, who sees dead people no one else can see.

Everyone carries around a chainsaw in their mind, I thought. Unless, inexplicably, they don’t.

My husband pressed on, which is a little thing he does when he’s trying to have a serious discussion. It forces me to think about what he is saying, and it’s just so exhausting.

There are things I’ve been thinking about, I admitted at last—a job I’ve interviewed for that I really, really want, but won’t know about for a while. Some writing projects that have been on hold because I don’t know where they are going. An art endeavor that is challenging and possibly above my pay grade. All are worries that scratch at my consciousness even as I sleep, and then they scratch at my dreams.

But I couldn’t come up with a definitive answer to my husband’s question. I did not know what the deadwood was that I was trying to clear out of my life, although clearing out sounded like a good idea, something I should probably do, and not just in my imagination.

In the annals of Freudians everywhere (and husbands pretending to be Freudians), not knowing the answer to a question is called “being in denial.” But in the annals of regular people, not knowing the answer to a question is called “uncertainty.” I was uncertain about what to delve into as I waited to hear about the job. Uncertain about how to proceed with the writing project. Uncertain about my ability to navigate the art endeavor.

“It’s not denial,” I said, possibly with a huff. “It’s uncertainty.”

Which, it occurred to me days later, was exactly the deadwood I wanted to clear out.

 

Dana Shavin is an award-winning humor columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and the author of a memoir, The Body Tourist and Finding the World: Thoughts on Life, Love, Home and Dogs, a collection of her most popular columns spanning twenty years. More at Danashavin.com. Email her at [email protected].