My kids and I went to JMU’s Edith J. Carrier Arboretum for story time this morning—"Story Time in the Understudy"—it’s called. I'd been worried about the weather and all the rain, and I was hoping that our first actual scheduled summer activity would work out for us. (We had it on the calendar after all. If it didn’t work out, we would not be starting off on the right foot.)
When I woke up this morning, I breathed a sigh of relief. The skies were clear, so I packed the kids in the car with a quilt, a picnic lunch, and a positive (yet still slightly tense) attitude. The stakes were too high for me to relax just yet.
We arrived at the arboretum with ten minutes to spare, spread ourselves out on the quilt underneath the trees, and patiently waited for story
time to begin. I noticed right away that the congregating crowd consisted of kids who were under the age of three. My son
is seven and thinks story time is for “babies," no matter how old the kids are. He carries around a
Harry Potter book everywhere. I think he does it to attract chicks, but he says
it’s just in case he gets bored. Needless to say, he opened it up seconds into the reading of the first children's book, which was a counting book. I didn't blame him. "Story Time in the Understudy" wasn’t
for Leo. However, he did enjoy his personal reading time surrounded by the beauty of
nature and the sounds of the rolling creek nearby. I was hoping Harlan would be engaged by the bug-counting book; instead, she was distracted by, well, just bugs...“Mommy, are there bugs in my hair?” she asked frantically.
“No, honey, there aren’t. Now listen to the nice lady read the story, OK?”
“OK, Mommy,” she said, albeit not convincingly. “MommyMommyLook! Is there a bee on my head? Is there?”
“NO, Harlan. There is no bee...no bug.”
“Are there spiders, Mommy?” she asked in her squeaky Harlan voice.
“No, baby. No spiders either. Now, just listen.”
For a few minutes, she pretended to pay attention. Before long, though, she looked down at the quilt, distracted by the basket beside me. “Is it lunch time yet?”
“NO, not yet. Listen to the story, honey. She’s reading about a bear now.”
“Are there bears here? Is one gonna get me and make me bleed?”
I should've known better. Really. “Sweetie, NO! That won’t happen.”
At that point, Leo sighed impatiently and looked up from his book. “It’s just a story, Harlan. There aren’t bears here…just like there aren’t wizards really.”
“Lizards? Are there lizards here? Mommy, can we go? Can we leave?”
"Thanks Leo," I said sarcastically, frustrated and dismayed that the activity was not at all working out for my family. Every other kid? Yep, they were into it. Mine? Not so much. We didn't leave though. We stayed for the entire 30 minutes of reading time. To have left early would've been to admit defeat on the very first day of planned summer fun.
As I folded up the quilt, Leo started with the question he'd been asking since his last day of school (which seems like so much farther away than last Thursday):
"Can we go to Target and buy every single Shel Silverstein book we find?"
"Um...NO! Absolutely not!"
"But why?"
"Because they're too expensive."
"GOSH Mom! But I love poetry. It's SO cool."
"Yeah, I know. And, it'll still be cool if I don't buy you the books."
"But…please! Can we buy 'em?" he asked again, hoping I’d change my mind. "How 'bout just one?" Compromise, maybe?
"NO-uh!"
"Whyyyy-uh?"
"Because you cannot just keep on with the booksbooksbooks. Because you already sleep in a library practically...because you—"
"OK Mom,” he shrugged, putting an end to my mommy lecture.
Then, just like that, he turned to his sister and said, “Hey Harlan. Come with me. I wanna show you somethin' really cool.” Lucky for me, he had shifted his enthusiasm to something else. Unlucky for me, he took off running, and, without even thinking about it, Harlan took off after him. There I was, stuck with the quilt, the trash, the basket...and two little kids running away down the sidewalk toward the parking lot.
“SLOW DOWN LEO!” I yelled through the peaceful arboretum. “HARLAN, BE CAREFUL!” I added. I also wanted to shout for them to stay on the sidewalk (the grass was muddy) and let them know that our second scheduled activity for the day (the trip to the library) would be canceled if they went into the parking lot without me.
When I finally caught up with them, Leo was, of course, no longer on the sidewalk. He had headed over to the muddiest part of the arboretum for sure. I took one look at him; his shoes were literally covered in mud, and he was standing by a tree, leaning against it actually. Thankfully, I caught Harlan before she followed her brother into the mess.
“Look Mom, the poetry,” Leo said so proudly.
“What?” I said. “Honey, that’s not poetry. That’s just a weeping willow.”
“No, Mom. It’s a poet-tree.”
“Is that one of your jokes I don’t get? If it is, it’s not funny. Seriously Leo?”
With his hand, he gestured for me to come to him. “Mom. Look closer.”
Against my better judgment, I took Harlan’s hand and led her through the mud over to the tree where her brother stood. I already have to wash his shoes. I might as well wash the rest, I shrugged. It was summer after all. We had time. Well, our calendar was packed, but I was sure we could squeeze in some muddy shoe washing somehow.
“See, Mom. There are poems in this basket. Can we get one?”
“Sure,” I said. My heart was warmed by the excitement on his face. And, at this point, I was intrigued.
I looked at it and shrugged. “I have absolutely no idea." I didn't know if what I was seeing was Arabic or coordinates to a treasure map. Either way, I couldn't read it. "Get another one Leo.”
He reached his hand into the basket again. It came up empty. “That was the last one.” With that, his smile disappeared.
“Honey, I’m sorry. I wish there were more in there.”
“This plaque says, ‘Leave a poem…take a poem’. I think people are taking them and not leaving any behind.”
“Yeah, it’s not much of a Giving Tree, huh?”
“What Mommy?” Obviously, he didn’t get my allusion. Oh well, I thought. It was more for my own amusement anyway. “Oh, wait," Leo said. "Are you talking about the Shel Silverstein book?”
“Yes, actually, I was," I said, hoping he would be distracted enough to walk away from the tree. "Now, honey, let’s go change our shoes before we head off to the library.”
“Wait Mommy, I have ah idea.” He wasn't budging.
“What is it?”
“When we go to the library, why don’t we check out all the
Shel Silverstein poetry books we can find and write some of his poems on sheets
of paper and bring them back to the poet-tree and put them in the basket so
people will have poems to take when they reach in? Huh, Mommy? Can we do that?”“Absolutely Leo,” I said. "That's a brilliant idea. I love it."
As we walked back to our car, hand in
hand, we left behind a trail of muddy footprints on the sidewalk and carried with us smiles and conversation about bringing back our own poems to give to the poet-tree.
Summer Activity 1...unexpected success...the very best kind of all.
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| For more information about the poet-tree, check out the link: |
For more information about the poet-tree, check out the following link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jmu.edu/arboretum/poet-tree-poems.shtml