She gently ran her index finger along the sharpened point of the pencil I held out to her. She looked at me as if I had brought her a bag of gold. “How did you get this pencil to be so sharp?”
She was 81 and my boss. I smiled and knew I scored – big time. I had just started with the company and her words and demeanor made me feel invincible. We both knew that every good worker needs a back-up plan in case technology fails. A black, well sharpened, number 2 pencil and a notebook are exactly that.
“You know, it’s all about the sharpener,” I said and instantaneously regretted that I took this pencil thing way too far.
I no longer work for her company. Interestingly, since my resignation, I have used the other side of my pencil a heck of a lot more than the pointy end. I am still finding pink eraser shrapnel on my desk and on the carpet. Faint traces of appointments and rubbed out plans which were written in my brand-new appointment book (an expensive calendar I picked up at Barnes and Nobel for a about a half a pay check) bear witness to the fact that most of my plans, no matter how sharp and intentional, may be at best fickle. I am grateful I didn’t use a Sharpie or some other forms of permanent writing utensil in my new book, lest I would have to fling all of 2024 in the garbage. Some messages are not meant to be written with what lasts.
But other messages are … like the message my father left for my mother in an old ash tree.
When we were kids, mom and dad took my sister and me on long Sunday afternoon walks. When the left-over beef roast was cleared from the dining room table and the pot of boiled potatoes was cleaned up, we would put on our hiking shoes and zipped up our parkas and headed into the woods.
When I close my eyes I can still see the young ash tree. We had come around a field and were about to head into the woods, when my dad suddenly stopped, walked up to the tree and pulled out his pocket knife. Slowly he carved my mother’s initial along with his into the bark and drew a heart around it all. I watched him intently as he first scratched the tender green with the tip of the knife and then repeatedly pressed the blade hard into the bark.
A + H
The white, fleshy letters stood out from dark green of the rest of the bark. Today, nearly 50 years later, the tree still stands. The letters grew with the tree and are no longer white and but gnarly and weathered. Over time the two letters and the heart grew as part of the tree, only visible to us who know where the tree stands and who witnessed the carving. To this day the letters are a testimony to my father’s love for my mother.
How treasured are the Words that last
The sayings which stand growth and time
Still speak in bark and lichened rind
Those Words which carved in tender wood
Can’t be ignored by those who look
As they who walk along life’s path
Who know that they are like the grass
Who know that just as flowers die
Are they who pass the ashes by.
Oh – that I remember, too
The wood that’s carved for me and you
With blood that stained that sacred day
When it ran down Golgotha’s way
His blood would void my greatest fears
Like pencil marks from paper smears
That I would stand this test of time
Let Jesus’ love carve heart and mind
When all is said and done, indeed
His love would be what’s left of me.
Poem and Pictures, Heidi Viars, 2024
Heidi Viars 
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