Happy Birthday Trees

The date on this will appear as September 21, 2009, it's actually from February 10.


Tu B'Shevat 2009/5769


All smiles, Duncan emerged from the back door of Chai Tots Nursery School at 12:45. "Mommy, Mommy! Today we had a birthday party for the trees! We made brownies and sang to the trees! And we planted seeds and tomorrow trees are going to grow!!" He raced to give me a hug. I pointed to Reeve sleeping in the stroller. Duncan hunched his shoulders, as if to hush his words retroactively.

One of his teachers, Morah Rochel, handed me a single lump of gooey chocolate on a paper plate. "To take home with you."

"Mommy, I'll share it with you if you like!"

"Thank you, Bud." I was hungry. I had jogged Reeve to sleep and hadn't had lunch. No matter how many four-year old hands had touched that batter, I was genuinely interested. Duncan adjusted bags and blankets on the lower deck of the stroller to position the brownie safely. Nonetheless, seconds later it was in his hands.

As we pushed our sleeping passenger up the ramp to the sidewalk, we made a plan to go to the library. It was warm in New York today, relatively. We felt wild and reckless in our hatless state. Duncan mushed the brownie between his fingers. "Maybe I'm going to just eat all of it," he said, gazing at the last morsel. "Mommy, can we make more brownies at home and have a party for the trees tonight?"

"For the sake of the trees... okay."

As we crossed Prospect Park West to the gracious promenade heading toward Grand Army plaza, Duncan turned to me. "Mommy, do you know how to tell how old a tree is? You cut it across, then you can see lots of circles. And then you count the circles, one for one years old, two for two years old, three for three years old...," holding up his fingers to demonstrate, "...nine for nine years old!"

"It would take a lot of circles for a tree to be as old as me," I said.

"Mommy, how old are you?"

"Thirty-nine."

"That's a lot of circles! I don't know if any trees have that many circles!"

Two hours later, with a conscious Reeve, a stack of new books (which included THE PIGEON FINDS A HOT DOG), and 2 hot dogs in our three tummies (necessitated by the powerful aforementioned literature), we ambled through Prospect Park with the radiant late afternoon sun in our faces. As we approached the "forest," the last stand of native Brooklyn woodlands preserved by the park, Reeve wanted out of the stroller. "Mommy, this is our witches forest," Duncan announced. "Let's be a family of witches. You be the mommy witch, I'll be the big boy witch, Reeve can be the baby witch, Daddy can be the Daddy witch, Wiley can be the dog witch, and we already have two cats!"

As we greeted "our" forest, we wished the trees a good winter vacation and expressed our hopes that they're resting well to make buds and leaves for us, preferably soon. We sang Happy Birthday to them. They listened attentively.

Along the path a parade of dogs -- a chunky bulldog, a nervous reddish toy poodle/something mix, a gray shaggy thing -- passed us, dragging their owners. Reeve took inspiration and yanked Duncan's lunch bag, which is shaped like a dog's head with two "ear" handles, and "walked" his dog in typical Reeve fashion, that is to say, gripping one ear in each hand. A quick-witted dog owner "barked" at Reeve's dog. Reeve smiled, vindicated by the one person who finally understood. Later, the game took a turn to the vertical -- "doggie" became a projectile missile to be tossed overhead with glee, again and again, until the final unfortunate trajectory that landed on Reeve's forehead. Game over.

At the fork in the path where a right turn would take us past an amusing waterfall and more quickly home, Reeve protested and demanded we go left. Apparently it was non-negotiable. Duncan tried to argue the case for going right, until it occurred to him that left would allow them to run full-speed down a very steep hill. "Reeve! Let's run down the hill!" he hollered as he sprang from the lower deck of the stroller.

"Not too fast, guys!" yelled worried Mom after their little disappearing bodies. I ran with stroller in pursuit. We all made it safely to the bottom of the hill. I exhaled. The boys scrambled on top of the rocks flanking the path. Two kings of their respective hills.

We crossed the Nethermead, a vast, usually grassy but currently thick with mud expanse leading to the lake. Our goal, to visit the birds en route to the playground en route to the supermarket en route to home before the sun set and the chill deepened. However, the mention of "birds" reminded Reeve of his beloved Pigeon, and suddenly, just this instant, we HAD to sit and read it again. And so we plunked on the sidewalk just above the lake, the sun's rays so low and gentle as to barely touch our faces, Reeve on his bum reading aloud with grunts and "mah!" (mine) and finger pointing the story of a pigeon who finds a hot dog and declares it his, but finds both his conscience and claim challenged by a diminutive duckling who expresses curiosity in the experience of a hot dog, never having tasted one before... Meanwhile, on the upper deck Duncan disappeared into a Batman chapter book, perhaps recognizing a letter or two, but mostly stretching for the imaginative world of a "big boy," as he imagines big boys imagine... Passing joggers cast glances at us. (What are they doing?) I stood in this moment of total and utter calm and stasis (an event with the frequency of a total eclipse) and watched a flock of Canada geese peck at the mud, arched necks bobbing, then honk as something surprised them into flight.

At last, the group reached the consensus that homeward motion was a good idea. Our fingers were finally feeling the cold. We rounded the lake, amused by seagulls and geese waddling atop the remains of the ice. Our path took us past the playground. Duncan wanted to go home. Once again, Reeve had a different view. We discussed the word "compromise," but Reeve shot off to the jungle gym before a conclusion was reached. Half a millisecond later, Duncan was running behind him with glee.

Reeve quickly found his way to that magical dipping bridge that "gives" just enough to offer a veritiginous thrill to trespassers. Duncan grabbed his Batman book and pursued the biggest big boy he could find, a strawberry blond boy with glasses, maybe 8 years old. "Hey! Look what I have!" Duncan called after him, chasing him around the high platforms. The boy glanced at the book without a shred of interest before scrambling down the chain ladder. Duncan looked back at me. "He wasn't really interested."

"That's okay, Bud. Maybe he's just thinking about playing right now."

"Maybe." Duncan shrugged and handed it to me. "Will you hold it for me?" I took the book. Then Duncan hung off the high edge with a sneaky smile. I instinctively put my arms up to catch my little boy. He leapt into my arms, stealing a momentary hug in flight. Grounded, he dashed after Reeve, who was figuring out his way up the chain-link ladder. "Hey, Reeve! Let me show you how to do that!" ... big boy again to little brother.

The sun had already fallen behind the houses of 16th Street as we made our way back up the Windsor Terrace hill. Conversation had turned to vitamins. An oversight a few mornings ago had led to Reeve getting eight or nine Scooby Doo gummy vitamins (which is to say the remainder of the bottle) in his mouth simultaneously, requiring forcible extraction and disposal of the wet remains. The Jewish sabbath conspired with the Christian sabbath to delay a visit to the local drug store, hence a two-day deprivation of gummy vitamins that could not possibly be endured another day. Would the store be closed by the time we got there? No. Were we sure we were going the right way? Yes. Just one more block, then we'll make a left and it will be on the next corner. The store with the seal out front, balancing a ball on his nose, that you can ride on for two quarters to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," remember?

Suddenly, from the lower deck, Duncan burst into tears. "What is it, Sweetie?" I ask, dropping to his side. "Did something hurt you?"

"Mommy, I miss being little," he managed to get out. Tears, unconsolable. "I miss when I was a baby. It isn't easy being a big boy!"

"I know," I said, casting for words. "But you also get to do more things too, right?"

"But I don't want to do those things!" Raw, open-mouthed sobs from his core. I kissed his teary cheek and put mine against it.

"You know what? I bet you didn't know something," I said. "Did you know that the Duncan who was One is still inside of you?" He quieted for a moment. "And the Duncan who was Two, still there." He looked at me, sure I was making up one of those dumb mommy things to try to make him feel better. "It's true. And the Duncan who was Three, all the way out to the Duncan who is Four."

"Mommy! What do you mean?" he demanded, exasperated.

"We're just like the trees. Our One self is in the inside, our Two self if a little circle around that, our Three self a circle around that... all the way out to what you can see now. All of them are still here, always."

He thought a moment. Then smiled wryly. "Mommy, that's something silly you said."

"It may be silly, but it's true. Honest." I held his hand a moment. Until I could feel he was ready to let go.

"Mommy, do you think they have those crunchy kind of vitamins, or just the gummy kind?"

"I think they probably have both," I answered as I leaned into the double stroller to recommence forward movement. "Which kind do you want?"

"The crunchy kind get stuck in my teeth."

"Then gummy it is."

"Yeah, I think gummy. I know the store you mean! You go left, and then you go right, across the street..."