When did I fall in love with books and writing?

As I reflected on that question my memories immediately drifted to the school library during my elementary years. I’m sure it was not a big room. But I felt as though I could get lost in those stacks. Lost among the many friends, and the many adventures, all surrounding me and protecting me from a world that seemed uncertain. I could spend, what seemed like hours, sitting on the little stool used by students to reach the top shelves, reading about people from the past, places I dreamed of seeing, animals I hoped to own and mysteries I knew I could solve.
During the summer, my best friend and I would ride our bikes to the city library and search through the books to find grand adventures. We spent many summer days living the adventures we read about. We imagined crossing great mountain ranges in the small woods near our home. We sat on a stoop near the center of our small town, watching for the men whose pictures hung in the post office. Our bicycles became Indy cars and our Johnny West Cowboys lived on real ranches.

My love for writing started during those same adventurous years. 4th grade seemed to be the year that I realized my own words could form stories. Our teacher introduced us to haiku. Suddenly my words found order and expression. I found a place to put emotions I did not yet understand. The other moment of awakening happened the same year. The teacher encouraged us to take popular fairy tails and change them to be our own. Wow! Not only did my emotions have a place to rest….my imagination could float around the page and create characters and places.

The most difficult part of realizing how much joy I could gain from writing, was finding the courage to actually write and risk criticism….this I am still working on!

As a child I never liked my name. It seemed clunky. It didn’t roll off my tongue. When asked to introduce myself I often stumbled and felt awkward getting the letters to exit my lips in the right order. Most importantly, it just wasn’t me. 

Then my name changed. My name became the name my parents might have given me had they been hippies. It became earthy, strong and rooted. It became me!

As a fifth grader I was quite tall for my age. I towered at 5’6” while my friends were still hoping to reach five feet. The winter of that year, my best friend Chelley and I walked to our local high school every Saturday morning to play in the girl’s basketball league. Competitive sports were still new for girls since Title IX had become law only a few years early. Mr. Montgomery was the dad of one of our teammates and he also volunteered to be our coach. He is the person that christened me with the name that would come to define me and remain with me for the rest of my life. 

“A kid as tall as you deserves a nickname.” Mr. Montgomery said this every Saturday and he would occasionally try out a name to see if it fit me. Then one Saturday it happened….”Tree.” My name, my identity, the name that gave me something special.

I wasn’t a cheerleader type girl, I was a big girl. Athletic, strong, competitive. I liked to play ball with the boys. My brother and I wrestled, boxed and threw each other around the house. He was older, but I was bigger. I was not a Teresa….I was a Tree!

The name Tree has stayed with me my entire life. Few people have ever heard my “real” name. The only people that still call me Teresa are people that knew me as a small child – mostly older relatives. My mother calls me Tree, my co-workers call me Tree and I always introduce myself as Tree.

People try to make my name fancy. They spell it with one “E” or pronounce it “Tray.” But it isn’t fancy, it is just like me. Big and strong and firmly rooted….it is Tree.