My friend Marian lives in a small house in southeast Portland. She raised her daughter there after the divorce. The daughter is off to college now, thousands of miles away.

There are three trees in front of Marian’s house – a Japanese maple, an English walnut, and a big, fat holly.

You probably noticed the pejorative in my description of the holly. The holly, of course, is dense with leaves year ’round, while the other two trees shed theirs and then regain green magnificence in the summer months.

The holly’s massive shape stands less than ten feet from the one large window in the living room, the one window in the house that could admit southern light during Portland’s dreary winters. The holly sits dowager-like, presiding over the front yard like a fat lady with a fork in each fist at a dining table, eating every bit of sunlight that otherwise would penetrate the house.

Over the last few years, I’ve commented about the awkward location of the holly tree and wondered why Marian has tolerated this dominating tree in her yard. Marian is a gardener, a plant lover, a flower maven. In a past life she and her husband were organic farmers on the coast. Besides that, Marian has been an advocate for solar energy and knows the benefits of natural light if nothing else.

My husband, who has been Marian’s friend even longer than I, has told her to remove that holly tree. Apparently so have others. When I arrived recently, Marian helped me bring in my luggage and I commented again about the dominance of the holly tree – at the same time noting all the flowers that are thriving on the other side of the yard, under the maple. “Yeah, lots of people tell me to rip out that holly,” Marian replied.

While fixing dinner together, we chatted about all kinds of personal issues, the way women friends usually do. I asked, “Now that your daughter is safely off to college, if you could wave a magic wand, what kind of life would you have?” Her answer was disarmingly simple – a little cottage in a beautiful place with friends nearby. Even a new partner wasn’t an important component.

While we ate our meal and in light of Marian’s vision for the future, I brought it up again. “I can imagine the spot where the holly is now packed with sunflowers and cosmos. Think of all the light that would pour into your living room. I just don’t get it, a flower gardener like you, allowing that holly tree to take up one of the best spots in the yard.”

After a little quiet thought, the answer came out. “Because it’s felt like protection. As a single mom raising a daughter, the holly has provided privacy. It’s been a kind of barrier, especially to the neighbors next door,” referring to a household complete with an alcoholic parent and a drug-dealing son- in-law. “My other neighbors told me to leg up the holly so I could see under it and no one could hide behind it, and I did that. Also, I’m still carrying a lot of anger and fear; I haven’t been willing to open myself up.”

We talked about the fears women have to live with every day, the potential for sexual assault that men, at least, don’t have to live with and that women like me, who have loving men in their lives, don’t think of that often. Marian said her fear is abating somewhat, and we speculated that a mother’s instinctive protectiveness could recede now that the child was no longer in the house.

I brought up another woman friend’s philosophy that you have to let go of something old and no longer satisfying to let in something new and better.

Although I’m not totally convinced by this dictum, I’ve had at least one instance when it worked perfectly in my own life.

I wonder how many of us, including me, hold on to objects or habits long after they’ve become useless irritants, just because their familiarity is easier to accommodate than the unknown. The time when I arrive at Marian’s house and the holly tree is gone and a bed of sun-loving flowers greets me will signal that Marian is ready and open for the next stage of her life.

By the way, at the end of our dinner table discussion, Marian mentally added hollyhocks to the sunflowers and cosmos in her imaginary front yard.

Victoria Stoppiello is a free lance writer from Ilwaco and has just as much trouble welcoming change as the next person.