It was an ordinary day, although unusually warm for an early morning in the desert sun. I wanted to nap in the shade of a Palo Verde tree, but my mind was heavy with regret—so many unacknowledged hurts, words I could not take back, feelings hid deep never to be revealed.

My burden was too heavy for the soil beneath me. As if in quicksand, my head started to sink as my fear-filled body stiffened. I wanted to cry out, but sound disappeared. What moments before had been my body lost familiar sensation. I could not see yet felt quite sure what once were my feet was now the crown of a Saguaro.

I wanted to panic but I no longer had feelings. Even my thoughts escaped me for new directions. Like many rootlets, they searched for meaning and nourishment elsewhere. In that ancient seabed, the nursery tree fertilized my metamorphosis with its own life, confident I would one day give so much more than I took when I ambled freely about Earth.

Seventy-five summers passed before my arms pulled free and stretched for sunlight, but winter’s frost dashed my haste. Now one arm is forever broken. Still so young, I had yet let go of the desire to become.

When I finally surrendered to stillness, I discovered my body through bats dining on my fruit, woodpeckers burrowing homes near my would-be heart, songbirds escaping hawks by nimbly making branches of my spines. No longer for myself, I could be for everyone.

Eventually, I grew two stories and sprouted many arms. Almost three hundred winters passed. I then forgot time as I forgot all that came before. Only then was I wise enough to surrender to my part in the plan: Be sturdy for others. Know kin through the gift of pollination above and the great web of connection below. Receive the gift of Milky Way as it marches across Sky. Humbly wait the nourishing deluge of summer monsoons, yet soldier though the casualties of winter — even revere death, for as my body decays I am still sustenance to those who struggle to live—knowing to be no more can be the greatest charity of all.