- You're the Balm
- Posts
- 🌳 Under the Catalpa tree
🌳 Under the Catalpa tree
When the Universe answers softly back
Karen Choi
July 15, 2025
If I knew she was taking a photo, I would have straightened my posture.
I was walking along the boardwalk when a tree stopped me.
Large, heart-shaped leaves. Heavy clusters of white orchid blossoms hanging overhead. And a sweet fragrance, similar to honeysuckle.
I looked up and said out loud, “What kind of tree is this?”
A woman on an electric wheelchair heard me. She paused, looked up too, and said, “It’s a Catalpa.”
We lingered there, admiring the tree from different angles. I lay my hands on the trunk. I pulled a branch down to smell the flowers. Took in multiple deep whiffs.
While I was in la-la land, she took this photo of me. “I hope you don’t mind.” We hovered over her phone as she showed me more pictures of the tree.
I took a couple photos of her under the Catalpa. She wanted to capture the full height of the tree.
We exchanged names. Teresa told me it was her first time visiting that side of the beach. Thanks to the streetcars now being wheelchair accessible, she plans to explore more of Toronto this summer.
Since then, she’s texted me pictures of clouds, willows, and smoke trees from her adventures.
This week’s care kit is for noticing, pausing, and gentle contact.
🎶 One Song
Verifiably obsessed with this one 🩵
And I wonder…when I share music with you, what do you want to know?
Here’s what I hear: Three voices introduce the main musical phrase. Itʻs an innocent question. Curiosity dances and trickles. Someone else in the orchestra asks the question. Followed by another response. Woodwinds, strings, flutes, horns. More trickles and sparkles. The question gets passed around. A rich conversation between the trio and the orchestra. Whispers, revelations, different points of view, tension, explosions, laughter, it even takes you out to the cosmos…but we always come back to listening and responding.
There isn’t a clearcut conclusion at the end. Instead, you leave feeling expanded and with more questions.
Contact is a concerto written by Kevin Puts, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer for the string trio Time for Three (TF3). The piece is inspired by the unknown and a yearning for fundamental human connection. I feel that and love the journey this music takes us on.
🎧 Listen to Contact: The Call in its entirety
✍️ One Poem
SMALL KINDNESSES
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
〰️ One Move
🌳 Under the Catalpa, I found myself reaching upward and grounding down at the same time. Connection often asks for that: to be rooted in ourselves while open to what’s around us.
Take a minute to be like a tree. Re-root and reach out. Breath by breath. Limb by limb.
I call this move, Be Still Enough To Make Contact.
May you notice something beautiful this week and say it out loud. You never know who might be listening. You never know what might respond.
Meet you under the Catalpa tree,
🫶 Karen
P.S. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here.
P.S.S. Thank you for trusting me with your time. If these emails ever turn into a burden, it’s okay to unsubscribe from You’re the Balm.
#6
Reply