smoores.dev

I stood in my backyard, staring at the tree. Its branches were tipped with the tiny, rust-red buds of early spring. They extended from a twisting, many-fingered trunk, an offering to the sun.

My heart sank, was sinking, had sunk. It weakly thudded its disapproval from a pit in my chest. My ears ring with the words of its sentence.

I don’t see how we can save it.

I’m being dramatic. I know I am. I’m certain of it. It’s just a tree.

I love this tree. For four years, it’s brightened my world. A foliage of deep, vital red each spring. A graceful, curving, fractal trunk, continuously dividing into dozens of limbs, hundreds of branches, thousands of twigs.

I don’t want to be responsible for its death. The thought of it hurts my soul.

Four years ago, we bought a home with an old septic system. “Marginally functioning.” It will last, but we don’t know how long. The sewer main runs directly in front of your home — you can connect to that. A year and a half at most, and then your home will be safe. Safe for you, safe to start a family.

Four years ago. We spent those four years at arms, engaged in the most excruciating bureaucratic battle of our lives. A battle of slow. Of paperwork, of committee meetings, of emails and phone calls.

A lost battle, from the very beginning. We live 100 yards past the border of the Borough, the municipality that regulates access to the public sewer system. A municipality that refuses access to any residence outside its boundaries as a matter of course. They will not help us. They can’t. There’s an ordinance — it says so. There’s nothing they can do. Nothing to be done.

The community where I was schooled as a child, the community we support and love and belong to, rejects us. Refuses our pleas. Promises to hold a meeting, to hear us out, to explain. Then meets in secret, gives no explanation, rejects us again. You can build a new septic system. Kill your trees, take down your fence, demolish your shed. You can’t use our sewer. There’s an ordinance. It says so.

I’m being dramatic. I know I am. It’s just a tree. But my soul hurts just the same.