A Window in Time

            My favorite place as a child was the large oak tree that engulfed most of my piano teachers front yard.  Mrs. Hastings, my teacher lived on the next block in a white one story house very much like my own and her tree was the perfect place to hide away and daydream during the hot summer days passed in a time before air conditioning.  This tree stood taller than the house and seemed enormous to my eight year old self.  Even the lowest branches were thick enough to climb and it was easy for me to climb high into the tree by placing my bare feet one after the other, limb to limb until I reached my favorite perch within the tree.  There was an intersection of limbs that formed a large cradle with more than enough room for me to sit or even lie down and gaze up through the foliage at the sky.  When I remember my tree place, I remember the smell of the leaves, like thyme mixed with wet dirt and drying in the sun.  I remember the feel of the bark, so old that it was worn smooth by countless rain showers and scraped clean by winters ice and snow.  I remember the birds that nested and sometimes fought over the nesting places in the tree and I remember the large Monarch butterflies that could be seen, nibbling on a leaf, their wings never still.   

            My tree place was magical to me.  I could easily hide unseen for hours.  I could lay back and watch the clouds forming above me and play that ancient game where I would try and identify the shape of a cloud.  On the hottest day I was cool in my tree, shaded by the layers of green above me.  If I got caught out in the rain, I could climb into a dry place in my tree where the leaves were so thick the rain did not fall on me. 

I sometimes brought gifts to my tree, an apple or large walnut and I would place these in a knothole on the side of the tree.  I sometimes brought a book with me and lay reading in my tree while the constant Kansas wind made the leaves sing and sigh like some botanical radio.  The light had a special tinge in my tree; soft and diffuse so that when I curled up and let my gaze wonder, it was easy to believe myself in some exotic place instead of in a plain old oak tree in the front yard of my piano teacher.

            Back in those long ago days I used to sneak up my tree and dread the day that my mother or my piano teacher found me out.  Tree climbing was, after all, considered dangerous and definitely not for girls.  Now I think they always knew and looked the other way, trusting my eight year old hands and feet to carry me safely up and down the tree.  And they did.  Every time.