For every thing there is a season. When we all lived in that great home in Seaton we never lacked for things to do. We had a whole town to explore, with cricks to examine for exotic wildlife, a ball diamond to play games, a lot to play football and tree to climb and see out toward forever.
This was the tree Bill Seaton would climb and yell Skiboo! or Bakee! depending on his mood or whether it was his mother or father calling him home for supper. We would climb as far as we could, then stay there for an hour talking of things long forgotten and likely of no great import today, but at the time as treasured as Fort Knox. At the time of our youth it was a big sprawling edifice that befitted the necessity of firing up the imaginations of the boys, and yes girls, it sheltered. It was a wonder of the neighborhood. A beacon of strength and promise of joy. From our dad lifting us up to the lowest limb when we were too small to reach, to the last day we stayed overnight, it was a constant; a perpetual symbol of kid and kinship.
I took this picture a couple weeks ago. It is still green and still majestic, but it is reaching the end of its time. It has a shaggy look to it now and the bark looks like an old dog, mangy and tired. The lowest limb that was the starting point for a climb is now gone, and from other limbs hangs not kids with laughing lee, but deer in the fall and, last week, a gutted pig. The lot that saw football games every weekend now sports a garden and storage shed.
Every thing has a season. The beacon for neighborhood kids shines no more. There is no light nor kids to draw. Maples live to be a hundred so she isn't finished quite yet. But like me, we know this won't end well. The poet in me says God put that tree there to give us an idea of what strength and pure happiness really means. The realist says we were just damn lucky.
Nice Post.
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