The Elm and Judge Brown

Last Thursday's extraordinarily violent storm roared through Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens, downing power lines and thousands of trees, ripping off roofs, and killing a driver who had pulled over to the side of the road. The next day, I wondered if my favorite tree in Prospect Park, an ancient, magisterial elm on the West Drive, had survived. On my way to the park that morning, I passed a downed pine tree in the front yard of a neighboring apartment house. When I turned left onto Plaza Street, I could see that part of the road had been closed to traffic. Two large trees had fallen, taking with them large chunks of concrete sidewalk and blocking the road.

As I walked up the park's West Drive, I had to watch my step in order to avoid tripping over the fallen branches that were littering the road. I thought of Scarlett O'Hara's journey home from Atlanta during Sherman's march to the sea. Everywhere she saw devastation. Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind that had swept through Georgia? Like Tara, my elm was still standing. But it had not escaped unscathed. A tree-maintenance crew had roped off that part of the road that passed under it, enabling a worker to saw off some of the tree's partially broken limbs that were in danger of falling onto the road. Perhaps six branches had already crashed to the ground. This was not the first time a large branch had been ripped from the tree. It has long sported a neatly sawed off limb, lower than the ones that had broken off on Thursday.

My fondness for the tree stems not only from its grandeur, but also from the fact that last fall it looked particularly spectacular. Unlike the other trees nearby, whose leaves were bright yellow, the elm was late to turn color, providing a striking and stubborn contrast to the picturesque leafy decay nearby, as can be seen in the photo above. Yes, the tree was still standing, but its newly fallen branches had taken with them great chunks of foliage, reminding me of a patient's head, partly shorn for brain surgery.

Slowly the tree is shrinking, like the Honorable Wesley E. Brown, the 103-year-old Federal judge, featured in last Friday's Times. Both the elm and the judge are survivors. He's still hearing cases, although he avoids those that are likely to last a long time. His frame has shrunk, he's bent over, he relies on an oxygen feed, and he no longer walks the four flights up to his office, but his mind remains as acute as ever, still green in contrast to his body's decay.

I'm unlikely to live to 103, let alone live that long with my mind still intact. The chances are only 50-50 that one can survive one's eighties without becoming demented to one degree or another. Of course, I hope that I'll be in the lucky 50% if I live that long, but hope is not a program. In the meantime, I'll try to use to the fullest whatever abilities I possess. If I can remain, like Judge Brown, cognitively green, I will be fortunate. If one by one I lose my branches, so to speak, I will at least have been standing a long time, if not as long as either the elm or Judge Brown.