Mental Musings from
The Marginatrix
...because sometimes I just need to share my thoughts.
The first home I remember was a little Cape Cod located in the suburbs of New York, out on Long Island. It was a quiet street of little houses that lined both sides of the thoroughfare. Friends lived close enough to walk alone to seek playmates. It was safe.
It seems our house was the popular place to be. I'm sure my parents installed the jungle gym in the backyard to assuage my mom's overprotective instincts. After all, what better way to assure lots of friends while also ensuring your children remain close to home? We spent many hours on that jungle gym, swinging and singing and engaging in contests of who could scream the loudest, and I'm sure my mother was absolutely delighted. Though the backyard was fun, the front yard contained an attraction the backyard never could. A sprawling crab apple tree stood in the center of the yard, with branches low enough to entice even the most reluctant climber. We'd challenge one another to climb, never too high, and enjoyed hours sitting in that tree. The tree was thick with green foliage in the summertime, but autumn brought the changes expected from any deciduous tree. Wintertime meant just bare branches. But it was the pink blossoms of springtime that were absolutely breathtaking. Ours was known as the house with the crab apple in the front yard. No other descriptor was necessary. Springtime also brought the appearance of little white blossoms to the lawn. No matter that my father mowed the lawn every weekend, pushing the reel mower laboriously over the terrain, those flowers were persistent and reappeared almost immediately. And they continued throughout the summer. Summertime would find us sitting in the shade of this majestic tree, weaving these tiny buds into flower chains. At first, we made rings, bracelets, and necklaces, but there were so many, we quickly moved on to garlands which we used to adorn the tree. We were so proud. I don't recall ever seeing dried flower chains on our tree. Somehow, whenever we sat down to make more, the tree was bare. I always assumed they blew away. It didn't occur to me until many years later, my dad probably removed the unsightly dead flowers every week before mowing the lawn. It seems we, like most children, effortlessly created extra work for our parents without ever being aware of it. 11-13-2019
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Elizabeth J. Connor
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