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On a distant branch of my family I have a cousin who says he is a treeman. Unfortunately he had been estranged from the rest of my family for about six years. I remet him at a graduation party in early June of this year. I was very happy to see him. We always had a good relationship. Nothing had changed.
Tuesday night he called to say he was coming and he wanted to bring his family. Is it cool?
Yes. Bring them. Need directions?
Just your address. I can figure it out. Maquest. I’ll do a to and from.
Okay. It should take about 2 ˝ hours.
Just after 10 Wednesday a big maroon van pulled in my drive. Out piled an Italian guy I didn’t know. His name is Fernando. Chaz said he would be the hauler. Fernando turned out to be the boyfriend of Clarissa, a cousin from the other side of Chaz’s family. They had their 2-month-old baby boy Amidor with them.
It was like a clown car, more people poured out. Chaz’s beautiful dark-haired wife, Rosalind, appeared. Soon I was to meet the three munchkins.
The oldest was a chatty intellectual four-year-old girl named Rebecca. She hung out with me for most of the day. We cooked together. We went to the river and tossed in pennies to make wishes. We fed the mallards. I mentioned what a beautiful summer day it was. She said, “It’s not summer; it’s Friday.” I think she was right. She asked for paper so she could draw maps. And the most important part was finding matches AND finding words that made one’s mouth into a circle. Long “o’s” like in open and ghost and arrow. She was eating up the world. We fixed a roast together and put on the timer. I said when it made a “ding” sound we could eat, one hour. It did the ding, but the potatoes and carrots were hard and I saw pink still on the pork roast, so I added a half hour on the timer. She said, “I am starving. You said we could eat when it went ding. Now I will go into the living room to wait.” She wasn’t pissed, more resigned to me not keeping my word. She is minime! Her attitude, her demeanor, the way she speaks, her interest in words, the way loves the world…everything! It is truly scary. Of course I like her very much and this is our first meeting!
Chaz kept commenting on it too. He said she is very much like me; that she didn’t usually take to strangers so fast. She is in kindergarten and she’s only four.
His boy, a rough-tumble dude named Nate, pretends he is off in his own world. He doesn’t talk a lot and doesn’t want to be bothered too much. He found the blue paintbrush from my tree-painting experiment and promptly painted himself, a bench, his sister Haley, his mom, and me a lovely blue. Wait I already was blue. I left the paint on too long and when I went to the hardware store for mineral spirits it didn’t work. So just the others.
Nate did join Rebecca and I for some of the drawing. He made hearts, sort of. COOL! When Rebecca writes her name she makes apples for “b’s” then made a perfect lower case “b” and said, That’s how my mom wants me to make them. I like them like this. Oh oh, another person creating her own language.
Nate really showed off his skill at the end of the day. He carried BUNDLES of sticks out to the frontage. Too funny! Boys really are boys right from the beginning.
The littlest child was a bright-orange haired girl named Haley. I touched her hair and she screamed. She’s a tough little spark plug. No one will ever tell her what to do. She got in on the clean up and carried a single stick out too following behind her brother.
While everyone else worked, Rebecca and I had a discussion on what girls need. Rebecca needs a new bible and more homework.
If you wondered about Amidor, well he is like perfection. He didn’t cry all day and when I would stroke his cheek and say his name, he would coo, act alert, and give me a smile. He’s already dangerous to women. He makes them want to have babies. What a Romeo!
All day I watched Chaz in the towering elm. He is so professional. What finesse! I have many obstacles in my yard…a fence, arbors, sculptures, the new rebar/blue glass thing I am making. He hit nothing. I didn’t know that treemen wore stabbing spikes in their shoes. He has ropes that can hold up to two tons! I liked the way he seemed to become the tree when he was cutting it.
It was a great day. You should see my tree. It was all dead limbs, scruffy, and depressing to look at. Now it is skinny, all refreshed. It looks stronger.
I must say that I never hosted so many children at once, by myself. But I did it. 4 adults, 4 children. Lunch was cold cuts and chips and cookies. I made the roast for dinner because my oracle once told me that it is the easiest thing to make. He is right. Everyone, even the children, ate and ate and ate! I never had so many compliments. Of course it was nearly dark when we cuddled around the patio table. We put freshly-chopped dead limbs in the outdoor fireplace for light and heat. We all finished with strawberry sundaes. Whipped cream too.
