 family tree few few weeks ago I spent two days in Mendocino tucked away on California's northern coast heard the waves lashing the rocks saw a red breasted robin ready to take flight a young seal on the rocks sunning itself then setting out for a swim when I heard hiked in Fern Canyon I touched the trunk of one sturdy redwood tree climbing the narrow trails inhaling the misty air I saw nobody else out there this Tuesday only those ancient pteridophytes layers upon layer of green beckoning and bewitching from the other side of time I descended back to pygmy forest nature's bonsai of acorn and cypress stunted trees adapted to the saline soil five hundred thousand years old the landscape became more stark less serene I stood transported to a different time a different tree a different time a photocopy in charcoal black empty white and shades of gray from a five full years ago it could have been a Japanese artists inkbrush drawing a single tree standing on a winter's night severe and still or a botanist sketch of a new species with nodules narrowing for branches but no it was my mother's arteries captured from her angiography in just look hospital Mumbai soon after her heart attack I took the image consulted cardiologists in Palo Alto and San Francisco a month later she became ashes sprinkled in the Godavari River traveling to where the Arabian sea kisses the star-studded sky becoming engulfed in the universe's eternal canopy a black and white sketch that still breeds in a cardboard box of mine along with the torn black book of her recipes and her childhood photos one of her sitting in her chubby frock at one another of her watering young saplings as a girl of 11 one more at 24 holding her newborn baby standing next to a budding jasmine tree thank you