So it should come as no surprise that words simply failed us when
we reached our beloved destination only to find that those old, noble Maples
were gone. In their place were rows of new saplings, sparsely leaved and
unsymmetrical in shape. A temporary sign at their edge announced, "Removal and
Replanting of Norway Maples," followed by the explanation:
"At over 83 years of age, the Norway maples (Acer platanoides
"Schewedleri") planted in double rows on both sides of the cherry esplanade
have reached the end of their lives. The remaining two rows of maples will be
removed this fall and replaced with scarlet oaks (Quercus coccinea),
sturdy long-lived native trees with brilliant red fall leaf color, in the
spring of 2004."
The deed was done and the sign now stood as a reminder of what used to be. And
here again was that unsettling talk about trees and their life spans. I
wondered aloud if those who had planted them as testimony to their reverence
and hopes ever imagined that they would not even outlast the time allotted to
their own children, the children who became the parents of my husband's
generation and came into the world around the same time as these now-vanished
Norway Maples and L.A.'s soon-to-be vanished Mexican Palms. Geneva Victoria, my
mother-in-law's lyrical name, resonates with the hopes that this war-tried
generation placed on their new-borns. My husband tried to console me with the
thought that these scarlet oak saplings would one day be the giant shade trees
of future generations of garden-lovers and that they, like us, would feel the
cool, damp grass beneath them as they, like us, took refuge under the
commodious shade of the trees, which the sign, with an epithet worthy of Homer,
had proclaimed "long-lived."
All of which only served to intensify the bittersweetness of my melancholy. We
walked a few feet and noticed that the plaque that used to commemorate the
armistice was still in its place on a large rock at the foot of the path
between the trees. But the words on it, like everything else, had been changed,
though we were ill-prepared for what we read:
Liberty Oak
May 2002
These scarlet oaks are dedicated
in remembrance of the events of
September 11, 2001
and to those
who lost their lives that day.
The Norway maples that grew as
the first generation of trees on
this site were planted in
November 1918 to commemorate
the World War I armistice.
It is one thing--and a very bad thing--for the current caretakers of Los
Angeles to replace its now-legendary palms, which the first Angelenos had
planted haphazardly as standard-issue street trees, with broad-canopied and
affordable shade trees. But it is quite another for the current caretakers of
the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to give over the ground hallowed by the armistice
monument to the victims of September 11. No doubt those who erected this new
plaque with its ugly politicized title meant to do honor to both. But monuments
are distinguished, above all else, by their particularity: By giving a
particular material shape to what might otherwise be lost in the onrush of
time, they fix the event in public memory as much as in place. So long as the
Norway Maples continued to grow in Brooklyn, we could literally see the time
that had passed between the end of the Great War and our own moment, and in so
doing, feel the presence of our grandparents and great-grandparents who had
sent their hopes to us in the shape of a grand allee of trees. Surely it is a
sign of the moral ineptitude of our times that this wondrous gift has been
thoughtlessly demoted to second billing for no other apparent reason than that
the end of their natural lives unluckily coincided with the sudden, awful
events of September
11.
