Am thinking of walking through the woods surrounding the house I grew up in on Becker Road ... Last week before Dad's surgery MJ and I took a stroll because she said, "Mom, I really want to go in the forest!" Trees hug Dad's house like a security blanket. Dad has harvested wood for his stove to heat the house for almost 40 years now. Heather and I begrudgingly helped chop wood shortly after we started walking! Slight exaggeration, but let's just say the sound of a log splitter is about as familiar to me as the sound of my Dad's voice. Because Dad's removed dead and dying trees, this small woods is really thriving.
(An aside: One year Dad was climbing a tree with a chainsaw -- not recommended. He fell and broke both arms. A few weeks later Heather sprained both of her arms playing high school hoops. So Dad and Heather had four casts/splints between the two of them.)
Anyway, I wound through the woods with MJ trailing behind, chattering in her mouse voice about poison ivy and bugs and birds. We stepped over spring flowers, Solomon's seal, what we used to call "umbrella plants" -- all the foliage intertwined with childhood. We passed young trees just poking up from the moist ground and old oaks and maples and birch and hollow rotting logs that MJ guessed were homes for rabbits or squirrels. I showed her where Heather and I and friends used to build forts, told her about the time I stepped on a dead cow that my uncle dumped in the back of the woods. Gross, I know!
Everything felt familiar until we ran across this--
I never knew about this memorial to our loyal family dogs. Dad got it when he was picking out Mom's gravestone. He's always loved animals and has given time and money generously to organizations that help them. Seeing this stone reminded me the size of my Dad's heart. Room for many people, animals and even woodlands.
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