Treewhispers

Another story told to and recorded by the Court Reporter

1 LESLIE’S FIRST TREE STORY

2 In 1996 I was — I was pregnant with a baby. And she

3 and I got sick. She passed after she as born. And

4 we moved shortly after to a new home. We had to

5 move. And in order to heal, I found myself trimming

6 underneath this huge evergreen tree that was in the

7 very front of our yard. It was very close to the

8 house. And in time, to recover, I was really sick

9 from it. It took about a year. And I stayed

10 underneath the tree. And just no one had ever

11 trimmed it, and it was just huge (indicating) and

12 tall. So I would just climb up and trim the dead

13 branches.

14 And then we moved from there, and eventually someone

15 bought that home. And then I saw that that tree was

16 up for an option for the Botanic Garden. They were

17 looking for a Christmas tree, and they had their eye

18 on three different trees in the area. And they ended

19 up choosing that tree. And so it was like in the

20 newspaper. They cut it down. It was very close to

21 the house. And so they brought it to the Botanic

22 Garden. And they put, like, 10,000 Italian lights

23 on. And it was the Christmas tree for that year

24 And I called up the woman who ran it, and I said

OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS –

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1 that’s a really special tree to me. And I told her

2 my daughter’s name, Zahava, and she called it

3 Zahava’s tree. And we visited, and we took a

4 picture.

5 Then many many years later, as I was working with an

6 intuitive, clearing different things, she said to me,

7 “Well, I know that you are Jewish, but there’s this

8 Christmas tree, an evergreen tree, crumpled in your

9 spine, energetically speaking.” And she said, “Does

10 that make any sense?” And I said, “Yes, it makes a

11 lot of sense.” So, I told her what my connection was

12 to that, and we cleared the tree, the tree — all the

13 gifts the tree had given to me, and its connection to

14 that event and to that time together that we spent

15 together.

16 There’s more to the story, but basically — I mean, I

17 have poems about it and writings about it. But

18 basically that’s one of the stories of being

19 connected to the tree, and that it says in you, you

20 know, you don’t go far. They don’t go far.

21 Oh, I know what the connection is. Then there was

22 Yom Kippur coming up, and Day of Atonement. And I

23 went to a river, and I played the flute, and I think

24 I tossed some kind of prayer. It landed on a leaf on

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1 the river, and it floated down. And then I went to

2 the person’s house where this tree was. And I

3 knocked on the door. And I said I need to just

4 connect, make a connection with the place where this

5 tree had been. You see that dip in your — you know.

6 She said yes. They were the same couple that donated

7 the tree. And I went to that spot. I think I

8 brought flowers and I brought water, and I played the

9 flute just to make our connection with the leaf full

10 circle. That was it. That was the story for me.

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Contributed by Leslie Schechtman