In the center of our parking lot at Meadowbrook Apartments stands a lone pine tree. It must have endured some kind of trauma in its young life, that chopped out or stunted the center top. Its Y shape branches salute me every morning and every evening, as I come and go from our temporary home here. The tree feels to me like a sentinel or a messenger. It isn’t an old tree. But it has seen a few things, already, and hasn’t let hard luck of being planted in tiny strip of grass in an acre of macadam crush its spirit. An old spirit in a young body. “Chill out lady. And smile, ok?”

My temporary home is his permanent one. The apartment complex, like Casablanca in the famous movie, is a place people come hoping to get somewhere else. People from all over the world are perched here, various languages spoken. Moving trucks come and go frequently. And some also call it home.

Like the pine.

Everyone wants peace. How do we find it? Where do we find it? Today in the parking lot, outside unit 503.