The Letters in the Trees

In Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, a children’s book by Mill Martin Jr. and John Archambault, the whole alphabet climbs up a tree. The letters are so heavy the trunk bends and the letters like too many children fall out. A and B and C cry for help. D has skinned his knee. G has lost his breath.  O is twisted. P has a black eye. And T’s tooth is now loose. The letters are bruised and battered. The letters are piled up at the bottom. They are all different colors. None are dead. It’s so late and the letters have been through so much. You’d think they’d hobble home, but no. There’s a full moon, and they are alive, and so they start the climb all over again.    

The most indestructible creature on earth is called a Tardigrade, also known as a Water Bear. You can find them at the bottom of a lake or living in the moss on your roof. They can survive air deprivation, starvation, extreme temperatures, and they can go without water for decades. They have eight legs, and the hindmost ones are attached backwards. They have survived five mass extinctions.   

When the letters fall out of the tree all the mamas and papas come running to “hug their little dears / then dust their pants.” But as quickly as the mothers and fathers appear they’re gone. I wish I knew where they went. I wish I knew what they looked like. I’m guessing they look like sticks. Or maybe clouds? Or maybe the parents of the alphabet are as ancient, and plump, and wrinkled as Tardigrades. And I pray as resilient, too.      

Don’t the words we know so well look off these days, like soldiers returning from war? It’s as if they have seen something. They look spooked. I am certain they know something we don’t know. Like a harmed thing, they have grown both softer and harder. I took the word “God” into my study, this is a true story, and looked at it under my grandmother’s magnifying glass. Its “O” was scratched, and had dried bits of tar at the edges which at least explained why “God” sounded so much less hollow lately. I set it aside.  I studied, “house,” and “animal,” and “child,” and “moon,” and “hello” and “run” and “police.” Every single one was chipped and unreturnable and tired.  Under the magnifying glass, I even watched “school” wander away into an ellipsis. …

So as not to poison or be poisoned by the air when we speak, we cover our mouths with a cloth now. Or if we are pixilated we can speak more safely through wires. How can this new existence not rattle our alphabet? According to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Tardigrade won’t die until the sun dies. I am thinking of taking the alphabet and tucking it into the folds of the Tardigrade before it’s too late. What I mean is I want to tuck my sons into the folds of the Tardigrade. No, what I mean is I am frightened the words that save me every day are splitting, tearing. No, what I mean is I am frightened we aren’t going to be okay. “We are digging,” writes Kafka, “the pit of babel.”                                    

Listen. I’m clearly no scientist.  I am trying to come up with a way to hide words in a translucent, microscopic animal with two eyes and a telescopic mouth. Maybe I could use a dropper? Or a needle? How do I even ask a Tardigrade for its permission? “Would you mind holding these please?” In wildly inhospitable conditions, the Tardigrade will harden and form a coat of sugar glass. I could knock gently until the Tardigrade opens. 

Yesterday I was walking Gus, my black poodle, in the mean July heat. Gus only has one eye but he saw them before I did: a procession of letters walking with their heads bent. It was mid-day, but they each held a lit candle that flickered like an argument with the bright sun. I tried to follow them but Gus pulled me back. I am worried the letters are going somewhere that soon might be impossible to get to. Look out your window. Let me know if you see them. Check the branches of your trees.