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1959:  That was the year we lost the willow struck by lightning one late summer night in an unexpected storm.  

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We all heard it happen, the tearing of soft wood, the smell of scorched bark.  By morning we could see the scar, the trunk twisted towards the house: it had to come down.  

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All day the buzz-saw deafened the neighborhood.  My brother asked in his small voice why the lighting wanted our tree.  My father tried to explain to him about grounding.  My mother said it was just one of those things that happens.

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All the same, we got used to it and for years the huge stump sat there like a monument: it was our picnic table, it was home base whenever we played tag.  Finally, my parents got tired of it, hired someone to go at it with an axe and cart all the pieces away.  Four wheelbarrows of dirt to fill the hole it left, but the roots were still there and we knew it.  

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Years later when we moved, we took with us everything that belonged to us except the roots of the willow, invisible, which were never ours.