the horsey tree

On easter mornings growing up, my sister and I would sit in our shared room and listen to our dad the easter bunny go thump, thump, thumping very loudly (he must be a bunny of extraordinary size) down the long hall to the family/dining room.  I don’t know how this ridiculous thumping became a tradition.  I guess my D.O.D. (dear ol’ dad) just acted silly one year and it stuck.

Sis and I would have a sleepover every Christmas Eve (long, long after we stopped sharing a room–in fact, I think we did this until she got married). We didn’t bother so much with the cookies for Santa (who we never believed in) but we adamently required carrots for his reindeer.  The reindeer always took a nibble by morning. 

On Christmas morning we would run to the tree like every other American child and snatch our stockings from the fireplace.  But, our stockings were shaped like dolls and the stocking part was the doll’s apron.  So, my clever and creative mother would have taken full advantage of the unusual stocking to hide little gifts.  The dolls always had on a new pair of underwear, often had on earings or hair clips and were sometimes decked out in some way to represent our lives that year.  One Christmas, my stocking doll was made out as a cheerleader (shocking, I know, but I went to a very small school so basically if you wanted to, you could cheer…in 5th and 6th grade, I wanted to) and my sister’s was rolled up in toilet paper (she had taken to "rolling" friends houses for a late-night adventure).

Dad is famous for his pancakes. He used to pour the batter into letters to spell out our names. He would make bunches and bunches of "silver dollar" pancakes and get a kick out of counting how many I could eat. A lot. 20? 30? Jen didn’t like pancakes.

So many little things became traditions in my house, growing up.  And, Jen and I wouldn’t let them die. We liked the traditions. We made sure they happened again, and again. One of the things I am excited about in raising my son is starting new traditions for him, for our family.  Although I’m sure some of these will be intentional (especially those focused around holidays), I am curious to see what unintentional events/habits will be turned into traditions for him. My guess is that my son will take what he deems beautiful and want to experience it over and over again. Beauty is like that–it makes you beg for more.  And there is so much beauty to be found in childhood. Like a grown, 6 ft tall man hopping down a hallway to the delight of his daughters. Like that book that my son will love so much that he will ask me to read it to him again, and again. Or that wonderful place he will want to visit, again. So, I will attempt to raise him creatively and expose him to little bits of beauty…and read the book again….and go back to the zoo, or the park, or wherever. again. And we will make memories.     

When I was growing up, my family had a "Cottage" on Cod Creek, off of the Rappahannok River, in Virgina. We would go there on weekends, especially during our summer break from school. So many of my childhood memories stem from our days at The Cottage. The house was at the end of a culdosac, on a street in Sherwood Forrest (yes, actual name of the development). Several large windows went up to the peak of the A-Frame on the side facing the water. There was a large red-painted porch which stretched across the back of the house and looked down a grassy slope to the water. My sister and I were not allowed in the back yard unsupervised, lest we might inadvertently go rolling down and meet an early demise, a sure drowning. There weren’t many kids in the neighborhood. The only one I remember was a little girl at the end of the street. She was called "little Sarah." I have no picture in my head as to what she looked like. I don’t even remember meeting her. I just remember that her parents had let her name the family dog.  He was called "Yum, Yum."

My family became good friends with some of our older neighbors and they became "aunts" and "uncles" to me and my sister. Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Coke lived next door. Uncle Coke re-built his porch twice in the ten years that my family owned the Cottage. The first time, Dad took the wood and built us a tree house, propped between three tall trees. The second time, Dad gave the tree house a second story, jail-like, to appease Mom who was nervous about her little girls reaching greater heights. Our dear Aunt Ellie and Uncle Frank, lived across a little inlet. He had been a policeman but had been injured in some riots, earned an early retirement and took to full-time fishing. She was Polish and ate herring and gave us dollars to rub on midnight, each New Year’s Eve. She always said "Go with God" when when parted, she lit candles at the Catholic church, and whenever my mom had a how-to question about medicine or cooking or what-not, she’d call Aunt Ellie because she was full of common sense.

So, my sister and I had lots of play time together–much of it outdoors. Jen was known to choose books over exploring–but at the Cottage, we would explore together. There was the treehouse, and hammocks, and a tire swing, and–in the summer–a clown head that you plugged into the hose and a stream of water would shoot up and ballance his hat several feet in the air. And, there was the horsey tree. The horsey tree grew up a couple of feet, took a 90 degree turn to go right for a couple feet, took another 90 degree turn and went back up for quite a ways. Thus, it formed a sort of a bench, or, for us, a "horsey" that we could ride and sit on. It was to the left of the house, off some distance, amongst several other traditionally vertical trees. I have vague memories of sitting and talking, and sharing stories at the horsey tree.  Mainly I just remember it being there…and going there by myself to sit.  It was a sort of landmark in the yard.

I loved the cottage. I cried when we sold it. Jen was in high-school and had more pressing engagements on the weekends. Mom and Dad realized that we didn’t use it enough to make it worth-while. But, I wished we used it more. And I cried. But, to no avail.