My Dad Was Magic
And his trees were too
So, ages and ages ago, we headed to NH Â for the weekend to see my parents, who when they are together were like the Castanzas (spelled wrong?) on Seinfeld, but were totally different when they are NOT together.
And people wonder why I'm so strange.
Anyway, we arrived my dad's house and there were all these birds swooping in to his back porch. First there were blue jays, then chickadees, then juncos, then a cardinal, then back come the jays. It was like in the Disney version of Cinderella and all the birds sung and fluttered and danced around.
Em (my kid) looked at me and whispered, "Is Grampa Lew magic?"
His orange cat meowed, and slipped between our calves.
"I think so," I said
Then my dad said, "Oh! The deer are back. Those are my deer friends."
Two white tail deer grazed in the less deep snow in the back of his yard. Em sucked in her breath. My dad laughed. "They are so tame. I think they'd let me feed them, which of course I can't do, but I WANT too."
He opened his sliding glass door and cluck-said, "Hey fellas, you look beautiful today."
The deer lifted up their heads but did not run away! I swear. They just listened to him. A chickadee pranced on the porch/deck railing towards my dad.
"He is definitely magic," I told Em.
Then my dad said, "You notice anything missing?"
There was a big, stump from a huge Douglas fir he planted decades ago. The tree was gone. It was too close to the house. He had to chop it down and I was so sad because it was like a death in the family and then he said, "You'll never guess where that tree is?"
We couldn't.
It was in the park. The town of Goffstown cut it down and lifted it over Dad’s house and put it out in the commons.
"I thought the old tree might as well have a good end, so I called up the Parks Department and I donated it," he said. "It's so perfect, such a perfect tree. Nature makes things so perfectly, so beautiful."
He smiled and he got crinkle lines around his eyes. He looked so handsome. He thought he looked wrinkled. I knew better.
There was a ceremony lighting my dad's tree and everyone applauded for him.
He laughed, "I felt like a super star."
He was a super star. Truth was, I would really have liked to applaud for my dad every day. I was really lucky that there were magic people, and I got to be related to one.