Slice of Life Challenge - Day 21 - One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

In case this is your first time reading my slices, here is my focus for the challenge: my fifth graders and I are participating in the Slice of Life Challenge this month, and they're writing memoirs.  I thought I'd do the same kind of writing - memory writing - throughout the challenge. I'm going to be writing around photographs and memorabilia.

Unfortunately, we don't have a picture of our crabapple tree, but this is exactly what it looked like!
 

       It's spring!  A fond spring memory I have is the crabapple tree that stood regally outside my bedroom window when I was a kid.  By April it would be in full and delicate bloom, filling up my view.  I know my dad didn't love that tree, though.  It dropped hard crabapples all over the lawn, and the branches, thick and knotty, made it difficult to mow around.  It also attracted bees.  They would create a low hum around the whole tree, dipping in and out of the blossoms.  One year, they managed to build a huge hive in the branches, creating a mowing hazard.  I remember watching while Dad and a neighbor delicately cut it down and Dad walking gingerly down to the woods to discard it.  Sadly, the crabapple was cut down eventually.  I really did miss it when it was gone. 

     I've always loved trees. I won a tree from a drawing contest in 1978.  You had to draw your favorite tree - I sure wish I still had that drawing.

Tree won from drawing contest:

I loved to climb trees and read under trees.  I've already written about how I would play Laura Ingalls Wilder by tying branches around a copse of trees, pretending it was a log cabin.  I'm also pretty sure I saw a UFO in the woods when I was a kid, but that's another blog post! ;-) The woods were my haven.  Fall is my favorite time of year because of the brilliant-colored leaves.  My dream house was always one that had a deck in the woods, and when we moved to Lebanon, that's what we found.  I love the birds, squirrels, and tree frogs that live in the woods.  I'm also drawn to art and photography of trees, and they're hanging on our walls.  I love books with trees, too.  One of my favorite middle grade novels is Ida B. by Katherine Hannigan, and of course, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.

 

 

             We always take pictures out on the deck because of the trees in the background!

           Looking forward to seeing this - our weeping cherry, pear, and magnolia blooming!

 

Apparently, my daughter inherited the tree thing, too.  Here she is in 1995:

 

Birches

By Robert Frost 1874–1963 Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

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Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969)