Memories

[Zochitl]

 

      I stood inside the garage looking at the withered tree in the walkway and my thoughts began to race to the time when my daughter and her grandfather were digging the hole to plant it.   I was feeling the cold breeze brushing against my face.  “This is going to be a bad one,” I thought.  I shivered as I wrapped my coat around my shoulders.

“Bye, honey, have a good day.”  I called out to my daughter as the Jeep started moving down the driveway. The snow was beginning to melt and I could see the tires sloshing thru it. We had been hit hard this year and it was good to watch it melt. I looked where the tree was as she turned the corner.

     “This ground is too hard Papou  and the hole is not big enough,”   I could hear her saying as I kept staring at the tree.  “We have to dig a bigger hole otherwise it just won’t fit”.  

        Dad was holding a shovel to his side as he looked at the one-foot deep hole his granddaughter had been digging. He had a frown on his forehead and a smile was slowly creeping on his lips. 

     At 95 he stood tall and erect, shoulders back and head always looking straight ahead. He loved to be around plants and enjoyed cutting, trimming, and planting any kind of greenery.    Now, he was helping his granddaughter plant an oak tree in the hot July sun.  She had gone and bought herself a two foot oak tree because she was like her grandfather.  She took after Papou loving to have all kinds of plants around her.

       “I think I have to keep digging a lot further and it’s so hot today.”   Small beads of perspiration dripping down slowly from her forehead.

        “All right Kukla,” the pet name he used to call her. “Let me help you out a bit.”  His gentle voice telling Cathy with a broad smile. “No… NO.”  She shouted as she tried to push Papou to one side.

 “I can do this Papou.”   The name she would call her grandfather.  I don’t want you to get tired.”  She begged.  “I can do it.”

          My father smiled looking down at this stubborn 16 year old and in his stern-way answered;   “Well now.  Are you telling me that I’m too old to do this?  What makes you think I can’t do it, eh?”   Lowering his chin and looking down at her across his glasses.   “Well, just watch me.”   He started to push her aside as she grabbed his arm and began giggling as they wrestled with the shovel.  Of course he won their little game. Dad still had a lot of strength for his age.

            They always  enjoyed playing games like that with each other  but at the end my Dad started the  digging.   After a little while, the hole was twice as big.   The little tree was placed inside and covered with good dirt, then watered.

       “Now we need to rest a bit.”  Papou said, taking out his clean handkerchief and wiping his forehead.         

           The oak tree grew tall and every fall its leaves turned all the colors of the warm earth.  It was a pleasure to see how this tree that had started from a small twig with 5 little branches and some leaves and now had grown fifteen feet tall as they both stood admiring it.  It had spread so much that in the summer it threw enough shadow to cover a car.   But in the winter, when the snows were deep, you could still see dried leaves clinging to its branches.   I often wondered why these never fell.   It was the only one like it in the neighborhood.  Its leaves kept clinging for practically the whole winter.

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 The years passed and the tree flourished until one night a car came crashing into its trunk making a dent in it but it never budged from its place.   The city preservation workers came and wanted to chop it down because it was dying, so they said.   My daughter would not allow it and kept fighting with them to let her try and bring it back to the way it was.

            “My grandfather and I planted this tree,” she would argue sternly. “And I’ll be darned if you take it away.  I know I can bring it back, Please let me try,” she would plead.

       They finally gave in after they saw that she wouldn’t budge.  They agreed to give  her an opportunity to see what she would do.  Kathy worked all summer and fall on her tree.  She kept placing all kinds of fertilizer and mulching the ground.   She would stay  outside for hours covering its tiny roots that kept coming out of the ground and giving it minerals and what she would call “ vitamins to make it healthier.”     And now there it stands.   One more winter.  Its dried leaves looking down at the world waiting for spring once more.  Tall and straight, with a dent on its side that now looked like a dried scar.  The leaves clinging this winter once more.   A tribute to a girl and her grandfather.   As I saw her drive off in the distance, I looked at the tree and  I knew he  was proudly smiling down at her.

 

 

[RavenDelcor]

What a wonderful story! Trees can outlast us all and the stories they could tell us, if they could would be just as marvelous as this.

[Zochitl]

Dear Raven. Thank you so much for responding. This story is close to my heart and I always cry at the end. My Dad was quite a man and I still miss him. The least I could do is write the bond he had with his                grand-daughter. 

 I'm so happy you are well.  I was beginning to worry about you. When are you posting?  I'm still waiting dear friend for that marvelous story you were writing before.... :-)