Cloud Watching

I am not sure how long I have been up here lying on my back and looking up at the clouds as they pass through the blue of morning, the leaves overhead dappled with shade from the leaves above them.

I came up here looking for something that my son lost. He was looking for it and blaming his brother for losing it and I thought I might find it here in their treehouse. I don’t usually come up here. I am uncomfortable with heights and climbing up the ladder stresses my knees. Plus this place isn’t meant for me. It was designed for little boys, not middle-aged mothers, and stepping up from the metal extension ladder that they tied to the tree always feels precarious. I cannot stand up all the way once I step onto the platform because of the canopy of branches and leaves that serves as the roof. It provides shade from the sun and protection from drizzle but a driving rain will find its way through leaving the boys drenched nevertheless. They keep talking about building a roof but they don’t want to block their view of the sky, for what is a treehouse if not a cloud watching station? 

After I hauled myself up here I sat down on my bum and then relaxed my back onto the makeshift wooden plank flooring, just taking a minute to readjust to the low ceiling and shaky construction. My eyes squinting as I looked up, up through the five-pointed outstretched leaves, amazed at their construction and placement, how they reach out strong, arching each individual leaf of those slender stems, all adjusted to find the sun that leaks through between the leaves overhead, all stretching and reaching and filling the spots in-between.

The list of things I had planned to do while my husband took the boys fishing starts to scroll down on the screen in the back of my mind...strip the beds...wash the sheets...hang them on the line...sweep the kitchen...mop the kitchen...load and unload the dishwasher...organise the recycling...wash the dog bowls...fold and put away the clean laundry...dust the living room...wash down the trim with oil soap...start dinner…

What else had I programmed for myself to do today? I am sure there were a few other items I couldn’t remember right now. If I didn’t get started I would never have my list all crossed off by the end of the day. Keeping on task keeps things running smoothly, otherwise, there is dinnertime meltdown when the boys are hungry and my husband has to get ready for work the next day and I have the weight of all the things I didn’t get done laying across my shoulders, weighing me down and getting in our way. 

What was I going to make for dinner tonight? I flip through my mental notes but can’t remember what I had planned. Did I take meat out of the freezer to defrost? Where did I put my phone? Did I leave it on the counter next to the sink? I hope my husband isn’t trying to call me. Oh that’s right, they don’t have reception at Round Lake so they won’t be trying to reach me until they are on the way home. 

What kind of bird is that? I am sure I have heard that call before but I can’t identify which bird makes which sound. I always mean to go on a bird-watching walk at the nature preserve when they offer them. I would like to know which birds sing which songs but the boys always have soccer on Saturday mornings so that never works out. 

I can see something flitting about in the branches above me, high up a traveling shadow.  It is too bright to really look so I squint into the living green glow. Through an open patch, I can see the blue of the summer sky and white clouds moving through like accelerated stop-action photography. I am looking at the sky through a keyhole.

Why did I come up here again? Oh, yes the lost item of much derision...I turn my head from side to side, unwilling to lift my weight to sit up and look. Around the edges of the platform my husband helped the boys build a short wall, chest height for them, and they have pushed their belongings against it; a dirty inside out sock... a broken bicycle pump...a deflated kickball...some comics that got left up here in the rain, which the boys tried to read again anyway...granola bar wrappers, chip bags and the remains of a box of cookies. Oh and Legos. 

I notice I am laying on a few legos myself so I sit up and dangle my legs over the edge. 

I can see over the yard into the neighboring hayfield and across that and down to the little stream at the bottom of the hill and them back up to the hills beyond, covered with mound upon mound of green treetops, like the drawings I did in elementary school art class. Even the birds soaring on the thermals look chevron-shaped and drawn on. Accept they are moving and my drawings never did that. There was never even the semblance of movement as my art work lacked any spark of imagination. My drawings were entirely two dimensional, lifeless. I always thought myself a terrible artist, so I was.

I can remember the dread when it was our day to go down to the art room. No matter what the project, I knew mine would be the worst. There may have been some boys in the class who did worse work, but I never even considered theirs, it was the girls whom I compared myself to. They all seemed to have some talent. They could at least cut and paste neatly. 

If we were required to cut out construction paper into flowerpetal shapes, my pencil tracing lines would always show and little ridges would be visible wherever I repositioned my scissors for the next cut. If I tried to trim the edges to make then smooth, I would find that I had whittled away my piece too much and the flower petals were all different sizes. Once I glued them on the green background, smudges of glue turned the petal edges greenish and made the whole picture look grimy. Drawing assignments were even worse as my page would be riddled with grey eraser marks and patches where the paper was worn away by multiple attempted corrections. Everything looked asymmetrical and off-balance. I was ashamed by the result of my efforts and always longed for the entire exercise of my creativity to be over. Being an artist was a birthright that I did not have. 

Now my own children are the age I was then. It is their turn to struggle with paste and paper and pencil to see what comes forth. Do boys think like girls? Do they sit and compare themselves mentally with all the other boys and rank themselves on their talent-o-meter?  They certainly never said anything about it to me but them I never confused my inferiority to my mother either. I would hand her my artistic creations, “I made this for you” on my lips. She would give me the perfunctory, “Oh, it is so beautiful. Thank you” and then pin it on the kitchen wall or fridge to hang until it became faded with age or we moved or someone knocked into it by mistake and tore it. I suppose she threw them away then. I certainly hope she didn’t keep them. What would be the point in documenting my incompetence?

The breeze is picking up and the leaves are casting dancing shadows on me and the treehouse decking making it look like a projector is overlaying a movie over everything. Maybe a good artist could capture this and could save this moment forever with pencil and paint and canvas. Maybe he could capture the feeling of it all, the pervasive peace that comes from looking at the light and shadow moving in time with the breeze. Somehow you would be able to feel it on your own skin and breath in the relaxation of the moment.

I wish I could carry it back inside with me, this feeling of contentment and wholeness. Not my fractured existence of transient household chores that are never done, but this real being. I am sure it is getting late now and I should figure out what I am making for dinner. Maybe I should just make a frittata and a salad, but the boys won’t like that. They will probably complain. I should just get up and go inside. If I get up now I could defrost some ground meat and make meatballs and sauce before they get back. 

But it is so quiet up here. I lay my back on the rough flooring again and feel the weight of my whole upper body melt into the wood. I take my feet and left them onto the decking tucking my feet onto the edge and feel the sharpness of it press into the arch of my feet as I press myself up farther onto the floor of the treehouse and adjust myself so I can see through the leaves to the sky. 

I cant remember looking at clouds like this since I was a child myself, laying on the back yard on our busy street, the sound of cars and trucks passing in front of our house would recede in my mind as I contemplated the contrast of white on blue. Do clouds ever really look like anything else or is it just our juvenile minds trying to organize the elements into conceivable terms? 

I close my eyes and listen to the sound the leaves make as they touch. When we touch each other does it make a sound? Can the trees hear us as we knock and bump into each other and reach out for affection and escape? A poem forms in my mind…

“The Breeze whips little tendrils of hair across my face

Gently

Warmth soaks into me

The shade is my solace

From the sun’s strength “

My consciousness starts falling away and I simply feel the breeze moving the hair on my arms ever so slightly and the weight of my head pressing into the hardness of the decking and my shoulders blades aching ever so slightly from my body against the flat unrelenting surface. 

And then I am awake. Someone is calling my name and I know his voice. He is calling me back to lists and chores and unending tedium. Yet he is calling me back to love.