Helicopter Leaves

Just about everyone has seen a sugar maple tree. I’ll bet you have, even if you didn’t know it. Sugar maples are the trees with “helicopter leaves.” These emerald blades are not leaves, but seeds, or seed pods to be more precise. They hang in pairs, like angel wings. Taken apart, they make a wonderful child’s toy with which my brother and I would spend hours playing outside. Take a leaf and throw it up in the air, it spirals down, flitting to the ground. Toss it up, spiral down…uuupppp, spiralspiralspiralspiral down. For some reason this simple activity will entertain 4 and 6 year old boys for a good hour at a time. It can be done over and over again; the leaf doesn’t ever want to stop. Flitting through the air is what it was designed to do. The only reason the leaf has to stop is because the person throwing it gets tired or bored or disenchanted with the silly arboreal appendage. There is a negative aspect, though, to removing the leaf and using it as your personal plaything. Once that leaf is removed from the tree, it is dead. It may not be apparent for a few days, but eventually the leaf will dry out, turn brown, and crack. After this happens, the leaf can no longer fly. It certainly occurred that my brother and I would go outside towards the end of fall, as the last few leaves were barely hanging on to their branches, and try to find some helicopter leaves to throw up into the brisk air, hoping to float them on our breath clouds. But the leaves did not fly. The few that we found were thrown up, and fell like cruelly winged stones. We left them there, and there they will stay. They will sit on the ground, becoming mixed in with the rest of Mother Nature’s detritus and eventually will no longer be recognizable as helicopter leaves.
Call me cynical, but far too often people’s feelings are treated as helicopter leaves. Removed from their tree and used as a plaything to satisfy someone’s need for entertainment, they perform so well until the player is through with the playee and leaves the “seed” on the ground after that last throw. Sure, there are more seeds on the tree so that when someone feels the need to be entertained again, he can just go and grab a handful. But eventually the seeds are going to run out.
Everyone has had moments in their life when they feel as though their emotions have been treated like helicopter leaves. Unfortunately, it is just such an experience that led me to come up with this comparison. For two years I gave myself to her, gave everything that I could. In actuality, looking back, I gave way more than I needed to. She is the kind of person who unknowingly seeks out helicopter leaves to play with because she is too afraid to let others play with her own. Who knows exactly why; maybe it is the influence of her mother, her father, her ex’s (the ranks of which I am now a part of). It took me two years, but I realized that I no longer had any more helicopter leaves to give away. I would not, could not let myself be left bare. It is difficult, though, to realize that your leaves are slowly being plucked off, and many times not noticed till it is too late.

I had broken up with her once already. Telling the woman that I was in love with that I couldn’t be with her anymore is quite possibly the most difficult thing I have had to do in my life so far. I was tired of the double standards and the constant disappointments and the inadequacies. But of course, as I had been conditioned to do in the relationship, I backed down and asked, begged for her back. She took me, but not without reasserting her control over the relationship. I warily gave it to her, hoping that things would change for the better. If only I held on to the fact that I knew people don’t change for others, but only for themselves. If she didn’t see anything as a problem, then why should she fix it, right?
The week for which we had been back together had been a good one. We were slowly getting over things. She couldn’t stay at my house, nor I at hers, because it was still “too difficult” (her words, not mine…I desperately wanted to hold her through the night). I was leaving for a week long tour, and she was going home. We knew that when we returned to Harrisonburg things would be returning to “normal” again, but for now that seemed so far away. “Normal” came before the return, and that was much too soon. Even halfway across the country I was already doing things wrong. How can someone so easily find fault in such an amazing thing? The clincher came towards the middle of the week. We had just returned to Virginia from Connecticut. It had driven straight through from Hartford to Fairfax, and the first stop was dinner. It was March, and the streets were covered in a sheet of ice, making the roads and parking lots treacherous. It was her birthday. My first mistake had been staying up until three o’clock in the morning with the group and not calling her at midnight. I had woken up at 10:00 am and jumped straight in the shower, missing two phone calls from her in the process.
“I’m sorry, baby…I guess I just don’t tend to think of it as the next day until I have slept. No, of course I didn’t forget your birthday. I have to get on the road; I will call you later tonight.”
Dinner, beers, chatting…it soon became eleven o’clock in the evening and it was time to drive home. It was at this point I received a text message. “I’m going to bed. If you’re going to call me, do it now.” We went outside, and I called her. I gathered the guys together in the freezing cold, ice-covered parking lot and we sang “Happy Birthday” to her over the phone. She then wanted to talk with her roommate who happened to be touring with us as well. In the fifteen minutes they talked, everyone decided to load up and head out to our respective places of sleep for the evening. I got the phone back.
“Baby, I know you said you wanted to go to sleep, and I have to drive again and I don’t know where I am going so I have to get off the phone. I love you very much. Happy Birthday, and sleep well. I will talk to you tomorrow.”
…Slight Pause…
“Well an ‘I Miss You’ would be nice…” That was her response. After the singing and the ‘I love you’s and the sweet dreams she still finds something that I didn’t do adequately. Honestly, what the fuck? It was then that I knew that it wasn’t going to work out…I never should have given in to the feelings of missing her and us and what we had. Those feelings were inevitable, and they were going to come after I ended it with her for the second time as well. Stupid me…stupid her…stupid love. We spent an hour on the phone later that night, when I should have been hanging out with my friends, talking about us and the weekend to come. I didn’t tell her on the phone, but I knew the decision I had to re-make. Dammit, Blaine…

So now what? Just as the tree no longer has seeds on it to play with, the emotions of the “tree” are no longer green and fun. They are lifeless, lying on the ground in dry, brown clumps. Throwing them up into the air will result in them simply falling back down limply to the ground. Those seeds are also useless for planting…they won’t grow anything at all. And here is a secondary dilemma that results from a lack of helicopter leaves: he who desires entertainment, craves entertainment, is now without a source. It’s a lose-lose situation, with one person clearly losing far more than the other. I am not exactly sure what she feels that she has lost, but I lost my first love. I lost the woman I had wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I lost my ability to open myself up. I lost my comfort with relationships. And what did I gain? Bitterness, fear of relationships, and a slowly growing anger that has yet to be put to rest.
Of course, there are more trees, and the entertainment-craver can certainly find another tree from which to pluck seeds. But what about the first victim of seed-stealing? Should another person come along and want to play even responsibly with the helicopter leaves, there is nothing left for the tree to give. It is fruitless, with nothing to offer now or in the future through the plantings of seeds of joy, acceptance, comfort. The tree has been ruined. Certainly the tree will sprout new seeds, and certainly another person will come along to play with them. But during the time in between, all are unhappy. Be careful when you play with helicopter leaves. Don’t take advantage of the entertainment they can provide because despite the eventual return, being seedless is bad for everyone, especially the tree.
My helicopter leaves are slowly growing back, but there is no throwing them up, no spiraling down, no pure and untainted happiness at the wonders of passion and sentiment. How great it would be to once again innocently be throwing them up with my little brother, having the respect of a child for the wonders of nature. But my leaves…my leaves will stay on the branches until I am ready for them to be enjoyed.