That one chestnut tree

 

I don’t know what it was like to live in hiding like the Otto Frank family, hidden from sight and all senses, secreted there on a street in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for two long years. I can’t stretch my mind around living for as long as they did with eight people in just a few yards of living space.

But I couldn’t help notice how Anne herself, only a girl, but bright as a shiny penny, took great joy in looking at a big bushy chestnut tree that stood just outside the only window she was blessed to use.

That’s it, just a single tree from a single window, while they waited, hoping and praying for the end of the war: one tree for all of nature, one tree so beautiful she couldn’t stop looking. On February 23, 1944, she and Peter, her one true love in the Annex, were dumbstruck at just that small square of the world, of nature.

“We breathed in the air, looked outside, and both of us felt that the spell shouldn’t be broken with words. We remained like this for a long time. . .” Full  of the vision, she glories in it, shares it with her readers:  “The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside to where they can be alone with the sky, and nature, and God.”

This from a pre-teen who never got out once they were ensconced in the Annex.

A few months later, she looks again. “Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It’s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year. . . I firmly believe that nature can bring relief to all who suffer.”

The most difficult part of my ten weeks in a hospital learning how to get along with a walker and a wheelchair was confinement. A prisoner to my condition, I was blessed with a wonderful window and a gracious view of the yard, a window and a view that Anne Frank would have determined an even greater blessing than the one she enjoyed from way up high in the attic.

Outside a window just down the hall stood a youthful red maple, perfect teardrop shape. I came to Heartland in the warmth of September, left in the cold of November, almost a year in seasons, and that whole time I couldn’t help looking at the red maple, for weeks a fire on the lawn, for weeks, a blessing.

There are only three mentions of that big chestnut tree outside the attic window in the hidden annex on Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, but this time through the book I couldn’t help but think about her gorgeous chestnut and my maple, burning red with the fire of a bright dawn sun.

Nothing gold can stay, of course, so while the Anne Frank House on an ordinary city in Amsterdam still opens itself up to visitors, that marvelous chestnut took sick and, despite heroic efforts of tree doctors, simply collapsed 24 years ago.

Just a year before its demise, those same tree doctors collected a season’s bounty of chestnuts and distributed them all over the world—three in this country, seeding from Anne Frank’s exquisite dream.

But you and  me, we’ve got our own trees, plus we’ve got sunsets with sweet carmel skies stretching as far, some nights, as we can see. We have rivers and streams in wide open spaces bigger than any imagination. City or town or country, nature’s blessings are all around.

A fourteen-year-old Jewish girl speaking the wisdom of Solomon: “The  best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy,” she wrote, “is to go outside.””

That wisdom from a kid who couldn’t get there.