Toothbrush tree benediction

Let us praise the soft bark, the wide leaves.

What we had in Arua was the sky. To release our small and big sounds into. It took them all. And when we tired, it never did. It held everything in kindness. I have found two other places in the world that feel like home in this way: the dry, abrasive dust. The exposed, exposing sun. The open sky. How much more it was, than any of us. How like a benevolent, strict, parent.

“Praying for Rain” by Maaike VanderMeer. More original art for sale here.

As I walk under the stern sky to the market, I see a woman resting against the tall toothbrush trees, her basin of gaudy plastics on the road beneath her. I don’t know what else to call the tree, except toothbrush tree, because since I can remember I’ve known you can snap the small branches off and use them to clean your teeth.

Their leaves are enormous – I find one yellowed on the road and pick it up – and fight the impulse to wrap it around me like a blanket.

A week later, lost on the paths behind the town’s new cathedral, I come across a man buried in plants. On the clipped grass next to him, an elderly woman sits next to her walker. The plant nursery is immaculate. Pine and toothbrush trees and eucalyptus and fruit trees and – why not? – strawberries. A small boy dressed in pink spins circles under a mango tree.

I stop long enough that the man straightens from his tomatoes and leeks, and comes towards me. I ask him the name of the tree seedlings by the strawberry vines and he says “teak”. I ask to buy one; I am grateful, after having Googled and searched for the name of this tree all week of my return, with no answers.

He can’t believe I am buying one, or that I am buying only one. “Where will you plant it?” he asks, and I don’t confess to be leaving on a bus in two days. He gifts me a second seedling. It costs 500 shillings. I need it to cost more, for it to matter that he is here in giant rubber boots, gently planting a good future. “This tree will grow to remember you,” he tells me, kindly, but I want to correct him: it will remember you.

Teak trees are Arua to me, especially now that I have lived elsewhere in Uganda for years without spotting one. Uganda is a surrogate mother; teak was originally brought from South Asia and it is still exported back to India.

I remember the trees as soft and they are, but inside the wood is durable: teak was used to build homes, tools, and temples that have survived over 2000 years. It was used to build ships. (The British began using it in their navy in the 17^th century.) Teak is used medicinally for digestion and headaches. It has natural oils that resist water and fungi. The tree can endure drought, making it perfect for northern Uganda.

The germination of teak seed is “slow and uncertain”, say the tree books, and can take up to three years. What marvels of seedlings I am holding in front of me, carrying along the winding paths.

It seems to me that there is a benediction in all of this. Let us praise the hard, straight spine. Let us praise the soft, spongey bark. Let us praise the wide leaves,

boats to children, blankets to lizards. Let us praise the slow seeds, packed in everything necessary: unyielding dreams, soft guesses.

Let us praise how the teak releases her seeds to the rain that eats the ground, burrows new paths,

carries her children on its back.

Every generation shall call you blessed. Let us praise two thousand years,

the mystery of God in a woman, the enduring teak tables and temples and spoons and shovels and ships. Let us praise what remains,

the woman who surrendered her soft fingers to the children for toothbrushes and tinder and tummy ache, a woman who knows the sacred in herself

which shines in its oils of self-preservation, which is firm enough to take a place holding up the mighty halls of God.

---

Thanks for reading! We’re almost at the end of the essays I wrote during a week back in a town that was one of my childhood homes. If you like this essay, I recommend this one from the archives: