‘Harry’ the red trillium stood tall by Jeff Tribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejd_12ipIos

 Every time I see a red trillium, I’m reminded of my father, Harry ‘Red’ Tribe.

The flower runs deeply through our family history. Instead of serving Jessie Tribe breakfast in bed on mother’s day, my sister Lahring and I would hike across the road to our woods, trowels and six-court baskets in hand. Knowing full well picking a trillium meant another bloom would not return for seven years, we’d carefully dig up a few specimens, roots and all, along with yellow dog-toothed violets, jack-in-the-pulpits and May flowers. Returning, we’d proudly show off our handiwork before transplanting them into a bed on the shaded, north side of our home.

Our extended family would return from church for a cookout that noon, followed by a stroll to take in the floral beauty.

It’s a tradition which has lasted 60-plus years, evolving to incorporate a barbecue rather than open fire, my wife’s birthday additional celebration. 

Earlier this week, I was cutting and splitting firewood, late due to a deep-snow winter. In the manner of May flowers following spring showers, the trilliums were out a calendar week earlier than predicted.

Their arrival is a welcome harbinger of the season, red versions close on the heels of dog-tooth violets, preceding their white cousins by a week or two. The tips of white blossoms were just beginning to emerge amidst the scent of wild leeks, new growth welcome promise of the earth’s productive rebirth.

I began cutting wood with my dad as a comparative youngster. I’d rush off the bus after school, sprint through the cow pasture, cross the creek and join him. I started trimming top limbs with a sharpened axe, progressing to the back end of a chainsaw around the age of 10, learning how a log’s grain would speak to you when deciding where to hit it with a splitting maul. It was work, but didn’t feel that way, trying to make your father proud, surrounded by nature’s beauty.

Dad was a quiet yet incredible man. The product of a broken home, he along with most of his siblings, were wards of the children’s aid, raised in and out of an orphanage in between the youthful equivalent of indentured farm labour or household servitude. His childhood, without the racism or cultural destruction, shared much with those suffering the abuses of residential schools.

It could easily have embittered and broken him. Instead, dad made the hard, pivotal choice to break a cycle of neglect and abuse and instead become a loving, supportive father. A talented athlete who was invited to a St. Louis Cardinals farm team tryout, he had beautiful ‘hands’ that would have done a surgeon well, had he been given the chance. Instead, he embraced the financially-insecure life of a family farmer, building a household filled with love and the kind of stability he never knew. Dad could read pain in a child’s eyes, and was also a supportive presence, a Sunday school teacher who listened and cared rather than quoted scripture, a coach who shared his love of sports, a father, uncle and grandfather who loved children above all.

I had a brother-in-law whose habit was to quote famous people, presidents, monarchs and the like. I once remarked to him, my hero lay far closer to home.

Dad was still roofing houses, still cutting wood, still very much a larger-than-life figure to me at the age of 68. I will always find it one of life’s unfairest turns he would be caught in a power takeoff connecting shaft during a farm accident. We cut him out with an oxy-acetylene torch, loaded him in an ambulance and prayed. The doctors filled him full of tetanus, amputated his right arm and hours later, informed us we were lucky he as a tough old farmer.

The first thing he did after getting out of the hospital was prove he could both get on and drive a tractor. Dad would live to 97, holding his sense of humour and love for his family to the end. 

On his deathbed, I promised I’d share his story with the family he and mom built together, a little self-published effort titled ‘Life Isn’t Fair, But Your Response Is.’

Maybe some day, I’ll try and formalize that as a young adult novel in respect of the people he always supported.

In the meantime, there’s 20 or 30 face cords of wood to be cut. The red trilliums tend to be in marshier ground in smaller groups in our woods, threes and fours, the white higher in larger patches. One distinctive red version was the exception, standing solo near a rotting stump across from our cookout pit.

Every time I passed, ‘Harry’ ran through my mind. Not just for the obvious ‘Red’ connection, but his ability to stand strong and alone, brave against the vagaries of the world. A life well lived, an example well set, mindful impact reaching four generations.

That trillium has passed, part of the universal circle of life. My niece, a talented artist, painted a timeless ‘portrait’ which continues to hang in our house.

As it says on our parents’ gravestone, to live on in the hearts of those you loved, is to never die, a thing celebrated in our woods each and every spring.