Trees

When I was a kid, I used to love to climb trees. I was pretty lucky in this love because at the time I lived in Louisiana where they have these huge old Spanish oaks, which have low, easy to climb, thick branches (sometimes these branches will even rest on the ground). A little red-headed freckle faced girl can find a lot of quality time in the canopy of a tree. I would sometimes bring a book with me and sit up there and read, but most of the time I just sat and hugged the tree, and watched the world around me.

What made me think of this is that yesterday, walking the babies in our fancy-shmancy jog stroller (which we got for fifty bucks at a garage sale, thank you Nissa!! It's the same as the one there, though. What a bargain!!!) I noticed that a neighbor has a mimosa tree. Those are the trees with those pink spiky flowers that fall on your car and leave a huge, sticky mess. But when I was about 11, we lived in a garage apartment in Abbeville*, La, which had two very big (for mimosas) trees in the front yard. These trees hung over the sidewalk, and you could climb right up and sit on the comfy branch just under the safety of the leaves and few people could (or would) see you. People would walk by on the sidewalk and never look up, never see me looking down on them. I could have been dropping things on them and they would not have known I was there. (I suppose if something fell on them, they'd look up, but maybe not. People just don't look up... it's a weakness, really. We're lucky there are no mamba snakes around these parts). I used to love the half-sneaky feeling of sitting in that tree, watching people who didn't know I was watching them, walk by. I also just loved the way that tree felt. It's personality was bright pink, like its flowers. The leaves of a mimosa are also a very bright, yellowish green.

The last time I remember climbing trees was when I was about 20 years old, and we lived down the street from a park that had big Spanish oaks (this was in Florida. I get around). Then, it was mostly for nostalgia's sake to climb up there. I sat in the tree and watched the cars move down the boulevard. We lived in a lovely neighborhood with old, Victorian style homes and a park on every other block (called East Hill in Pensacola**). At the time, I worked as a waitress, and unbeknownst to me, one of my fellow waitrons (I hate that term, but some restaurants use it) lived in East Hill too. Paul was a tow-headed blond who made me laugh (when we had to sing the farkin' birthday song, he would always be in the back, making funny sounds or just making you laugh, and we'd all crack up, leaving the waiter in the front singing almost alone and furious with us). He and this other waiter, Kirwin, of lanky proportions and fire-red hair, used to hang out in the kitchen and recite funny bits from Monty Python. When I first met them, I pretty much hated them both, because I thought they were making fun of me (I think sometimes they were). But Paul spotted me in the tree. I guess he was an exception to the rule of "people don't look up." He didn't make fun of me, as I would have thought, but seemed to think it was cool that I climbed trees. He'd ask me "Climbed any trees lately?" and other servers would look at us like we were nuts when we'd laugh.

Now, I feel too old to climb trees. They seem too high, too dangerous. That, and there really aren't trees in Texas that are good for climbing. They either are too thin and wouldn't support my weight or they just don't have the kind of branches that make for easy access. There is one out at our family's house at Canyon Lake that is climb-able, and I have been up it a little bit, but it seems so small and so much not the trees of my childhood memory. I guess that's always the case-- everything is bigger when you're smaller.

I suppose that when my babies are old enough, they will want to climb trees. Maybe then I'll have a renaissance of my own tree climbing days, and climb up there with them. Maybe we'll make a fort, and bring snacks and books up there to read. And by then, maybe there will be puppies to drag up there too.

Trees feel wise, old, calm. When you're sitting in one, with its bark scraping your skin and the leaves cool and green around you, you feel calmer; you feel the passage of time more slowly. You can stay a kid forever in the crook of a strong tree branch. So if you're passing by the sidewalk of my house one day, and you decide to look up, you might see a family of red-headed tree squatters smiling down at you. We promise not to chuck anything gross at your head. (Well, I promise. And if Sean or Maia does, I will scold them.)

*If you go to the link, you'll see some pix of the town. That round fountain in one of them used to always get filled up with dish soap, and you'd have bubbly foam pouring from one side. That little square is right across from the library where I spent some of my absolute happiest days as a kid. Sigh. Memories. :)

**houses in East Hill are kind of like this one... this is actually in North Hill, but is really close. We lived in an apartment complex... not nearly as fab as this place. :)