Gelyka Dumaraos “The Mabolo Tree” is a part of my Postcards from Childhood Series, a three-part word series that is both memory and offering. It’s a return to the child I once knew, and to the hands and moments that raised me.
The day my grandpa died
was the day I realized—
life is a lifetime of goodbyes.
The heart has never felt complete.
One day I asked my aunt,
“What’s that tree?”
A towering one, standing alone,
weathering the years.
It had been there since I was young.
Houses rose and fell,
storms came and tore lives apart,
but the tree remained—
decades upon decades,
as if it were the only thing permanent.
But is it like life?
Do we stand tall whenever there is pain?
I was skeptical.
Surely, it too would one day fall.
Yet its leaves would scatter,
its seeds would take root,
and just like life—
hope would grow again.
The same hope I see
in the eyes of my nieces and nephews,
in the laughter shared
during family gatherings.
Life is never easy to figure out.
But it comforts me to see
that it goes on—
quiet and steadfast,
like the old Mabolo tree.
