The Emma Tree

A love story in three parts

I.

A woman sits on a bench. She thinks of herself as a woman, but she’s a girl, really—newly 19 years old and only just starting to flirt with the kind of life she wants to build. This is her favorite spot in her college town, located in the arboretum that encircles the south and eastern portions of campus. The bench sits on the edge of a man-made lake underneath a majestic tree. Arm-like branches reach across the length of the lawn behind her and one large branch swoops down over the lake in front of her, low enough that the tips of the leaves kiss the water. She refers to it as the Emma tree, named for the tree in the background of the proposal scene in the 1996 movie version of Emma. The tree that bears witness to Jeremy Northam’s Mr. Knightley telling Gwyneth Paltrow’s Emma that he rode through the rain to be near her, and he’d ride through much worse if she would just marry him, his wonderful, darling friend.

It’s the implied romance of the spot that makes it her favorite, and she spends hours in between lectures with her headphones plugged into her brick-like iPod listening to the Emma soundtrack and dreaming of her future husband. She prays for him, too. Like any good evangelical girl of the early-2000’s, after separate conversations with her roommate, her best friend, and her bible study leader, she chooses the bench under the Emma tree as the spot to write her Husband List—the all important document detailing everything she could ever want in a man. This list will ensure that God knows the desires of her heart, and that she’ll be able to easily identify her future husband when God brings him into her life. Obviously.

She sets her bible down on the bench beside her and opens her notebook to a fresh, crisp page, picking up her pen with a sweet earnestness. The first item on her list practically writes itself, he must love the Lord and make that relationship the center of his life. Inspired by Mr. Knightley and Emma, plus some very healthy dating advice from her mom, she writes “he must be my best friend” as the second item.

Number three: He must be gentle.

Number four: He must be strong.

Number five: He must have brown hair and blue eyes.

Number six: He must love to wear sweaters.

The higher the numbers go on her list, the more specific her desires grow.

When she fills up an entire page, front and back, she tears the paper out of her notebook, folds it up, and places it in the front of her bible, where it belongs. With a wistful sigh, she takes in the magic of her spot under the tree, dreaming about Mr. Knightley and Emma, about a sweater-wearing man with brown hair and blue eyes, about the day she’ll find her own happily ever after.

II.

A woman stands on a hill. The path in front of her slopes gently downward, curving toward a bench. The bench sits at the edge of a man-made lake under a majestic tree—the Emma tree.

From the top of the hill she watches her husband play under the tree with their kids; their four-year-old daughter cautiously approaches a flock of ducks and their two-year-old daughter tries her hardest to jump face first into the lake. After several stifling months of pandemic lockdown, they had driven 45 minutes up the freeway to her alma mater in search of some different scenery, in search of some room to breathe.

With surprise, she realizes that this is the first time she has brought her husband to the Emma tree, a thought that would have been unfathomable to her 19 year-old self who held so many romantic dreams for this location. In the days of authoring her Husband List she imagined at least one relationship milestone would happen here—a declaration of love, or maybe a proposal. Has she ever even mentioned the Emma tree to her husband? Has she ever mentioned her Husband List? She lets out an involuntary shudder at that last thought. Heaven forbid.

She can see a lot from her spot on the hill. With hindsight she recognizes the prosperity gospel element to the purity culture that surrounded so much of her adolescence—the idea that if you prayed hard enough and, most importantly, abstained from sex at all costs, then the Lord would bless you with everything you could ever want. You could create a Husband List that included the most embarrassingly specific, unimportant details and, if you behaved, you would get all of it, wrapped up in a stress free, blissfully happy marriage filled with electric chemistry and no problems at all. She now sees it all for what it really was—a recipe for disaster.

Her husband looks up at her, and when she meets his crystal blue eyes she can’t help but smile, because somehow, despite herself, she did marry her best friend. He holds their relationship together with his faith and gentle strength. (And he even wears sweaters sometimes!) Their life isn’t blissful, but it is rich, and deep, and good. Despite the fanciful views she once held about love and marriage, God was so very kind to her.

She walks down the path and joins her family under the Emma tree, firmly grasping her husband’s hand, determined to create a little romance in the midst of a very ordinary day.

III.

A woman slumps on the ground. Her legs are tucked beneath her body while her torso folds over the couch beside her. Paper and colored pencils lay scattered across the cushion next to her bowed head, evidence of the art therapy exercise she just walked herself through. Focused on the sound of her own breathing, she catalogs the tingle of emotional release that creeps through her system. Her husband places a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Would you like to tell me about it?” he invites.

He makes her favorite snack, and pulls her onto the couch and into his embrace. She shows him the picture she drew and talks through the realizations it brought her, explaining to him the small part of the trauma from their son’s time in the hospital that it helped her untangle. As she describes what she did to soothe her artwork, she sinks deeper into him, relishing the fact that his presence has a soothing effect on her as well.

Her long abandoned Husband List said nothing about ambulance rides with a two year old who can’t breathe, or extended hospital stays, or childhood asthma. It said nothing about PTSD and monthly therapy appointments, about what it would be like to face the terrifying parts of life so intricately connected to someone else. There is no picturesque tree swooping just so over a lake; only a beige couch, lumpy and stained from life lived with three young kids. But there is a strong set of arms around her, prayers whispered into the top of her head, and the comfort of being loved for her deepest, most vulnerable parts.

And she knows without a doubt that this sacred, unfinished hard—this messy life with her wonderful, darling friend—is, in fact, her happily ever after.

“It is raining leaves in the UC Davis Arboretum” by AlessandraRC on iStock

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Love."