Just at the edge of our driveway, there is a Gambel oak tree. The tree stands dancing the line between our driveway, our neighbor’s driveway, and the Ponderosa Pine Forest that our two houses slice through. In the Ponderosa Pine Forest that extends throughout the city of Flagstaff and our neighborhood, this oak tree is the only deciduous tree for acres. The tall, stocky legs of the pines surround the oak, dropping pin straight needles in bundles of three as the oak grows and extends outward, over five connected trunks stretching across our driveway to form a singular tree. Within the trunk of the tree resides an acorn woodpecker that seeks food, a home, and a mate within the bark of the pines, the facing on our house, and for years even our satellite dish, but consistently returns home to the tree. A tree that has stood in front of our house half a century before we even called it ours.
My family had different ideas of where the oak came from. My brother, Dylan, and I were convinced the previous owner had planted it, carefully tended and protected it from elk and deer until it could stand on its own. My dad thought it was sprouted from a long-forgotten acorn, buried by a squirrel for a special fleshy treat to be treasured in the future only to be lost and grown into a tree. My mom said it was always there. Before the house and before any of the pine trees, the oak stood strong, her roots stretching, creating a maze of the dry and acidic mountain soil, waiting for all the other plants to form around her. These stories followed us for years, even when we stopped building on them, they always came back when we needed them most.
Our oak tree
***
The diagnoses came one right after another, only a month separating them. The anecdote surrounding Dylan’s seizure as a six-year-old on the soccer field transformed from a one-off tale about the importance of hydration, to the start of a nineteen-year long journey with surgeries, impossible to pronounce medicines, brain scans, and alternative medicines. My mom’s diagnosis came as more of a surprise. Ten years after her initial diagnosis, nearly all the women in my extended family have had breast cancer; however, at that time, she was one of the first. Our family history of breast cancer started with my mom.
We were living in France at the time for my parents’ sabbatical. Their goals to complete research with colleagues in these countries, have their kids fully immersed in a new culture and language, devolved into a field of navigating a new chronic illness, understanding prognoses, finding doctors at home while abroad, and eventually cutting the year short to go back home to get access for medications for Dylan and for my mom’s first surgery.
***
Boxes filled each of our rooms. Remnants of tape just torn off, luggage tags, old toys, and too small clothes that we had to get rid of right now littered the floor of my room and spilled into the hallway where all our clutter merged into one. My dad declared earlier that morning, just as he had the one before and the one before, that we had to finish unpacking that day. And just as I had the one before and the one before, I set to my room by myself and furiously unpacked box after box, attempting to appease my father’s desires but only turning the maze of U-Haul boxes, and Dr Seuss books, and unspooled yarn, and five-year old shorts, windier and windier.
While adding the third kindergarten art piece to the giveaway pile, I heard a scream from my parent’s room, followed by my mom’s cry.
“We don’t have any hangers!”
I ran over to their room, just in time to see my mom attempting to throw half a broken white target hanger into a trash bag. My brother stepped out of his room and began to giggle as he saw her wielding the hook of the shredded hanger. My dad reached out to comfort her but she shoved past him and rushed outside.
My brother, who remained planted in his doorway, scoffed and rolled his eyes.
“There’s like twelve in the living room.”
“Dylan—” my dad started.
“I’m just saying she’s overreacting! We have hang—”
“Dylan!”
I put the remaining shards of the hanger in the trash as my dad and brother continued their argument. I grabbed a pair of my mom’s shoes and walked into the kitchen. I climbed onto the counter so I could fully see out of the window to our front yard. My mom stood next to the Gambel oak with her back to the house, her bare feet on our long gravel driveway. The sun rays peeking through the divots and gaps in the green leaves of the tree until landing on my mom’s face, her body casting a shadow on the hot gravel. With her tennis shoes in hand, I forced open the door to the driveway that with years of snow and drought had become just too swollen for its frame.
She heard the rustle of my feet against the blue and gray rocks as I cautiously approached her. The wind rushed through the finger-like leaves of the tree, forming almost a whistling sound as it met our ears. She turned around, holding a leaf she must have plucked from the tree, rubbing the velvety underside between her fingers, tears sparkling at the bottom of her eyes but not falling.
“I brought you your shoes.”
She laughed softly. “Thank you, sweetie.”
She took the shoes from me and pulled me into a hug.
“I have some extra hangers in my room,” I said into her shoulder. “I don’t think I’ll need them all. Dad and I can also go to Target tomorrow and get more. I need stuff for school anyway.”
“You shouldn’t be worrying about this, sweetie.” She pulled away and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear.
“It’s just hangers.” I smiled.
***
In the early days of treatment, before she started her chemo, my mom’s friends came over to go on walks with her through the woods outside our house. Once she was worried about her immune system, they’d meet by the oak tree, parking in our driveway and waiting outside of the house until Mom was ready. They brought dogs, water, snacks, and meals they’d cooked for us. They stood smiling, waiting for Mom to meet them by the oak tree.
Our oak tree
***
As the leaves on our oak turned from the deep shiny green they sport throughout the summer into a mesh of burnt orange and a stark, pencil-like yellow, we could no longer reject the new world we were living in. Mom started chemotherapy. Dylan began a new series of medications that suppressed his seizures, mostly. Dad had to start working more while managing the appointments, treatments, and insurance policies for my mom and brother. Dad and I tried to remain positive, but as the chill of fall worsened and the leaves turned to a crinkled brown and slowly drifted off the tree leaving her bare for the winter, it became harder and harder.
Dad took Mom to the oncology wing in the hospital every Tuesday and sat with her for hours while she was receiving her dosage. He told me sometimes there was a dog there, a golden retriever, to sit with the patients. He always really liked Mom and would stay with her for longer than everyone else. After, she came home and immediately lie in bed, hopefully able to get up and walk around the block by Friday. Her dreams of being able to continue working and exercising regularly through these treatments cracked more and more after every week.
I started sixth grade a week after my mom started her first round of chemo. Our house had become an unnavigable maze of diagnostic paperwork, insurance policies, unwashed dishes, and whispers. School became a place of refuge from the chaos of home. I never mentioned my mom’s cancer or brother’s epilepsy at school.
Each of my classes sent me a list of school supplies I needed to have by the end of the week. I came home on Monday with the list, asking when it would work to go to the store. Dad promised he would take me after school on Tuesday, but Mom had chemo on Tuesday, then Tuesday became Wednesday, Wednesday became Thursday, and Friday afternoon Mom was picking me up from school because Dad was stuck at work.
I spent fifteen minutes in the back of the school searching for my dad’s white Subaru, my eyes narrowing in on each white car that pulled into the pick-up area until I spotted my mom’s gold Chevy Malibu at the front of the line covered in pollen and pine needles from sitting in our driveway, a cobweb trailing the right side mirror. My mom was talking to herself, a habit she always had but had increased since treatment started, in the front seat wearing a frayed purple beanie she had bought me in second grade.
I scanned my surroundings briefly, unknowingly tightening my hold on my backpack straps. All of my friends had been picked up at this point. The lot was filled, mostly, with people I didn’t know but I was petrified about what my classmates would say, seeing me get into that car.
“Hi Mama,” I said as I opened the car door. “Sorry, I was looking for Dad’s car.”
We began the drive to Target. Mom muttered incoherent words to herself, as I sat in the front seat, a privilege I had only earned because they stopped paying attention. As we pulled onto one of the main roads in our town, a police car pulled out from a gas station. Seconds after, the car turned on its lights and blared its sirens.
“For fuck’s sake,” my mom mumbled as she pulled over on the side of the road.
The cop wandered up to our car, flippantly asking for my mom’s driver’s license. He mindlessly fingered through her license, the car’s registration, and her ticket book for a few minutes until telling us why we were pulled over.
“Your license plate is expired,” he said, leaning into the car, his face inches from my mom’s.
“I’ve been sick,” my mom said. “We haven’t gotten a chance to catch up on paperwork recently.”
I sunk into my seat, my chest tightening.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He leaned back slightly, glancing at the beanie on her head. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a ticket.”
“Seriously?” Mom started. “I just want to take my daughter to Target.”
“It’s the law, ma’am.”
As they began to argue, I sunk deeper and deeper into my seat, pulling my legs up to my chest. I stared at the floor of the car, my nose touching the tops of my knees.
“She needs school supplies!” Mom pointed at me.
I felt my cheeks turn red. I quickly put my hands on them to hide my embarrassment from my mom as she looked at me.
“There’s no use in arguing.” He scribbled something in his notebook. “I’m also going to have to take your plates.”
“Are you kidding? Fine. Whatever.”
I clasped my hands together, rubbing the thumb of my right hand over my left knuckles. The officer unscrewed our license plate. My mom whisper-yelled things I could barely make out to herself. He came back with our license plate tucked under his arm and waved a ticket in front of my mom’s face.
“Have a good rest of your day, ma’am.”
She grabbed the ticket from his hands. He began to walk from our car.
“You don’t care about cancer patients,” she yelled.
I winced. I saw him falter slightly in the rearview mirror. She put the car in drive and pulled onto the road. I stared at him in the rearview mirror, worried he’d get back into his car and chase us down, starting this entire process over again or god forbid something even worse. But we drove off. My mom continued to argue with herself, repeating that interaction over and over until we pulled into the Target parking lot.
My mom, me, and our close friends Erika and Camila a few months after Camila and I were born
***
Gambel oaks are found throughout the four corners and span all the way east to Nevada and north to Wyoming. Oaks commonly thrive in mediterranean climates, yet Gambel oaks gravitate towards the arid heat of the southwest, storing water from the snowmelt each winter and waiting patiently each summer for the few instances of rain. In comparison to their coniferous neighbors, the Gambel oaks lie closer to the ground, adorned with a maze of bright green leaves by the time fire season rolls around.
As the years get drier and hotter, from April to June, fires begin to spread throughout the forests in Flagstaff. Each year, evacuations become more frequent and more common as fires roll from through the pine forests into the aspen groves and the oak shrublands of Northern Arizona. As these fires tear through the ecosystem, decimating the overgrown pine trees, the oak trees stand strong. The fires tear through their leaves, saplings, and graze their bark, but they persist, holding their scars with them for centuries as they continue to grow.
***
My mom and I at my brother’s college graduation
Once winter came our driveway filled with snow. Our oak tree’s branches bent to cradle every snowflake as it fell onto the gray-brown alligator skin bark. Her shadow cast far and outward, keeping the last patch of snow frozen between each storm, a consistent lounging patch for our dog as she would slowly shed her winter coat.
Mom was too sick to keep walking with her friends. She barely had the energy to get out of bed and lost motivation to see anyone outside of the family. And she hated wearing her wigs. They were too itchy, looked nothing like her real hair and she hated that they meant she was leaving the house.
One of her friends, Erica, after hearing her complaints about the wigs, brought over skeins and skeins of brightly colored yarn, two pairs of circular needles, and a book about knitting. She sat with Mom on the side of her bed and walked her through how to knit, as I peered in from the hallway. After the third time Erica came over, Mom had made her first beanie, a blue one just the size of her head with a brim that curled up around itself.
Erica stopped coming as frequently for knitting classes but Mom kept knitting. One Saturday morning, I crawled into bed with her. Leaning my head on her shoulder, I watched her loop the yarn together, stitch after stitch, as the hat grew into her lap. I quietly asked her if I could knit with her. She smiled softly and put the needles down.
“Of course, sweetie,” she whispered, giving me a kiss on the forehead.
She told me where I could find the second set of needles and another skein of yarn. She walked me through how to cast on, make a knit stitch, and the pattern Erica had taught her.
We began knitting together every weekend morning. She would progress much faster than me, always happy to teach me the new thing she’d learned since the last time. How to switch colors, how to do a ribbed pattern so the bottom didn’t curl, how to cable knit. By the time she’d finished chemo, we’d made over thirty hats for her. She contributed at least 25.
As her health improved and her hair grew back, she stopped wearing the hats and confidently sported her new chemo-curls. She continued with radiation treatment and an eventual mastectomy in the years to come. But we all held our breaths at each appointment, at each surgery, not wanting to say she was healthy as to risk complications or the cancer coming back.
In the following years, as the cancer diagnoses began to increase within our family, Mom and I dug up the hats we’d buried in the guest room closet years earlier. My mom never wanted to wear them after her hair had grown back, but we couldn’t bear to get rid of them. We started with a box for her cousin Nancy, picking out a white one dotted with pink flowers, a yellow one with pink striped accents, a powder blue cable knit one. Years later, we made a box for my grandmother, filling it with one of dark green and light green stripes, a white one dotted with black trees, and a ribbed deep red one. This left only a few, a plain orange one, a white one with pink and red polka dots, a striped blue, maroon, and pink one for my aunt who found out she would need the hats a month after her mom did. The last remaining hat, the first plain blue one my mom started with, stayed in our guest room, locked in the previously full box.
The first hat my mom and I made together after she finished treatment
***
Since their diagnoses in 2013, everyday life for my mom and brother have been filled with memories and aftermaths of that year. Through surgeries and experimenting with over twelve medications, Dylan has not had a seizure in five years. He will always have epilepsy, but has been able to drive, live on his own, and even drink which doctors did not believe possible at diagnosis. For my mom, with the scars left from her surgeries and mastectomy, she will always carry her three-year journey with cancer and treatments. But year after year, the memories get smaller. The mammograms and oncology appointments get less and less frequent and stressful. We celebrate June with more joy and less hesitancy. As of June 2024, my mom is eleven years in remission.
My mom, my brother, and me in France
***
In a phone call with my mom recently, I asked her how often she thinks about the years she was going through treatment. My breathing hitched the second I asked her. Although it has been nearly eleven years since her diagnosis, we never talk about it as a family. A small laugh rang through the phone.
“Well, it’s hard not to think about it.” I could hear a small smile in her voice. “I guess I’ve mainly changed how I think about it and not how much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it sucked. And it still sucks to think about.” We both laughed. “But I’m more comfortable talking about it now I guess.”
I began circling a large oak tree outside of the building my next class was in as my mom and I kept talking. The roots of the tree had broken through the soil slightly, creating cracks in the deep brown, almost clay-like soil. The leaves of this tree form into ovals, with slight spikes like claws along a cat’s paw surrounding the tree. Small holes lie throughout the trunk where creatures have made their homes or searched for a meal or snack. Although different from my tree at home, there’s a certain comfort in the twisted branches, the large trunks, and the dry, cracked soil.
My mom and I in New Zealand
“Are you comfortable talking about when you were going through treatment at all?” I asked.
“Oh yeah.” I could picture her nodding, furrowing her eyebrows slightly. “I’m good. Whatever you need.”
We continued talking. We asked each other questions with each memory we brought up until our conversation became about something else entirely. But whether it was about her childhood, a weird new trend I wanted to tell her about, something my grandparents had done recently or when I was a kid, we always drifted back to the years she was undergoing treatment even if it was for just a moment.
While talking about someone at work who was bothering her, she interrupted herself mid-sentence.
“You know what, sweetie. This woman who I just found out got diagnosed with breast cancer is over there and I want to talk to her.”
“Oh yeah, okay,” I said. “Go for it.” I started to step away from the tree, toward my class.
“Okay, thank you, sweetie. I love you.”
“I love you too!”
I went to hang up the phone, but I heard my mom start her conversation with the woman she saw. Since getting a smartphone, my mom never got the hang of hanging up after a call. She typically slips the phone into her purse, relying on the other person to hang up regardless of the setting she’s in or who she’s talking to. I normally hang up the phone on my end, being used to my mom’s habits and struggles with technology. But as I heard my mom start talking to this woman, I faltered.
“How are you?” my mom asked the woman.
“I’m okay,” she said. She told my mom about where she was in her treatment, saying something I couldn’t fully hear.
“Oh good,” my mom said.
As my mom said something that made the other woman laugh, I hung up the phone.
Smiling to myself, I walked toward the building my class was in, stepping over the roots and uneven terrain created by the large oak tree behind me.
My mom
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