Falling From The Family Tree

The last time I climbed a tree was just a little over forty years ago. How do I remember that? I'm glad you asked. Last week my "baby" sister, Dee, turned 40. I sent her a present and in the card I wrote that I remember the day she was born just like it was yesterday. And I do. I write that in her card practically every year, I guess, because every year on her birthday I make it a point to think about the day she was born. October 6th, 1967, was a rainy Friday in Oakland Park, Florida -- much like the rainy Friday two years later when Jenny the Pirate's dreams of a trick-or-treat treasure trove would be washed away in another autumnal monsoon -- and my older sister and I got to miss school because Mama's water had broken and we all had to take her to Plantation General Hospital to have her baby. I really had no idea what any of that meant. I just remember sitting all day on hard chairs in a chilly waiting area that was painted apple-green with a white lattice motif, watching soap operas on a little black-and-white TV set, while beyond huge plate-glass windows the rain fell relentlessly. I remember being hungry. Eventually our stepfather emerged from the scary recesses of the funny-smelling hospital to tell us that our baby sister had been born. We were glad. In the coming days we played with her like she was a doll, a toy ... and, good-natured little kid that she was, she let us and seemed to enjoy it.

I guess I was lucky that I was alive to see that day, the day my baby sister was born, because about a month before that I did something -- actually a couple of somethings -- really dumb. First of all let me say, when I was ten, if you did not see me tearing around the neighborhood on my bike (which if I remember correctly was a boys' bike with a banana seat and high-flying handlebars), then I was either climbing the tree that adorned our "yard" (it is beyond euphemistic to characterize the gravelly area preceding our front door as such) or sitting under it, reading. On this particular very warm and windy day in the late summer/early fall, I coasted into the yard on my bike and decided to grab my library book, climb the tree, and read up there in what I would pretend was a cool, spacious green room. The tree was not all that big; I was a shrimp and if the tree had been big I couldn't have managed climbing it. For some strange reason (this is actually the first dumb part), instead of parking my bike off to the side and letting its kickstand support it, I did the lazy thing and just sort of leaned it up against the tree. Then I got busy climbing.

No sooner had I gotten up there good than a gust of wind knocked my bike plumb over backwards. I looked down and saw it crashed there, the high handlebars sticking up at an ungainly angle, and I got very exasperated. I briefly considered letting the stupid bike lay there and just getting on with my reading, but something told me I'd better move it. I did my best to stomp down out of the tree because I was vexed at having been inconvenienced. I can't imagine who I thought cared. I picked up the bike, wheeled it over a ways, put it on its kickstand, gave it a dirty look, and climbed back up into the tree. I felt daring and invincible so I went a little higher than I would normally have gone. I had a vision of myself lolling on my back on one of the bigger branches, like Tarzan or his mate, Jane, in the furry black-and-white movies my sister and I sometimes watched on Saturday mornings while eating dense, packy pancakes doused with Karo syrup.

Here comes the second dumb part. I maneuvered my skinny little self out onto the inviting branch, sweatily clutching my book, and I remember that I actually LAY DOWN on my back on that branch ... how I did that I will never know ... and had been in repose there for all of, oh, four seconds, when I heard an ominous snap. The next thing I knew, my bony back had swiftly met the hardscrabble ground and I was unexpectedly sprawled in the precise spot where my fallen-over bicycle had been not five minutes before. The wind had been knocked out of me and if that's ever happened to you, you know how terrifying it is! I couldn't breathe! I remember thinking, I am going to die! I will never breathe again! My lungs are as flat as pancakes! And then suddenly I was screaming and my mother, heavy with pregnancy, wearing a purple-and-white gingham maternity dress, was running from the house to save me. I can still see her long dark hair, her pretty tanned face, and her nut-brown arms and legs as she moved as quickly as she was able.

Ten minutes later, fully recovered and no doubt lounging indoors, I had time to think about my scrape with death (or at the very least, paralysis). I shuddered at the thought of how close I had come to letting my bike stay where it had fallen instead of clambering down to move it. I had ghastly mental images of the condition of my mangled body after it had come down hard onto the upturned handlebars and pedals. I was reformed! From now on Tarzan and Jane could have all the trees to themselves. I would be content to walk (or ride) the jungle floor. Mama was going to have a baby and she would need me to help out. My teacher was expecting me to show up for school, and my friend Wendy Appenzeller would miss me if I weren't around. I would live to add my own branches to the family tree.