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We moved into a new house.
I was sad to leave our old house and our old neighborhood. Our family had
lived there for a really long time and I had friends all up and down our
street. That's all gone now.
We moved into a new house. This one was bigger than the old one. It had a
basement and an attic and two whole floors above the ground floor where my
mom's kitchen, the living room and my dad's library and study were
located.
Our new back yard was huge. A solid brick wall taller than my dad
surrounded it completely with a black cast iron gate across the sidewalk
that led between the house and the garage where Dad kept his car. That
gate had a large brass padlock on it that no one had a key for, but no one
seemed to mind that it couldn't be opened.
The gate itself was a little bit odd. Instead of just being straight up
and down with curves, like gates are supposed to be, it had large outlines
of owls and cats built right into the iron. My dad said that what I saw as
oddness gave it "character" but I thought that it made the gate
look alien and spooky. I stayed away from it.
Instead of just a grass lawn, our new back yard was a garden. Sidewalks
curved around or went between different beds of flowers or hedges or small
trees. Very colorful it was in the daytime, but scary at night with the
nightlights on, casting shadows in odd directions. The wall kept the wind
out for the most part so when the leaves were rustling in the trees next
door on either side or to the back, nothing stirred in our back yard
garden.
In the back right hand corner of our yard, close to the wall, stood a
really big pecan tree with wide, sturdy branches that towered well into
the sky. That tree caught the wind; seemed like it caught all of the wind
that blew into our garden. Only the leaves moved, though. The branches
were thick as my whole body and solid as the wall beyond.
Under the pecan tree, a large sand box stretched out toward the walk. It
was as big as my bedroom and my bedroom was pretty big! Four boards, large
and sturdy enough to sit on made up the border between the sand in the box
and grass of that part of the yard. Inside the sandbox, waiting for me the
day we moved in were three toy dump trucks, a front-end loader and a
bulldozer, all metal Tonka trucks in bright yellow, just the way I always
wanted. It wasn’t Christmas or my birthday either. My dad said he wanted
me to feel at home right away and that I had been so good about moving
that I deserved them anyway.
About a month after we moved into our new house, I decided that I should
explore the pecan tree. Perhaps I could see just how high I could climb,
or maybe, more realistically, I would just climb high enough to see over
the wall and into our neighbor’s garden.
The limbs were thick enough to support my weight; truthfully, I don’t
weigh that much anyhow. They were positioned just right for a good climb
and that’s exactly what I did. I climbed higher than I should have, way
higher than I should have, concentrating on keeping a firm grip and
footing. When I finally stopped and looked around for the first time, I
could see all the neighbors’ yards. At that moment, I realized that I
had climbed too high and started back down.
I don’t know why I slipped, but I did. One second I had a good hold on
the tree, the next, I was flying through the air, headed for the ground
and certain injury. Although I am smart enough to know that only a few
seconds passed, it seemed like minutes to me. That strange thing that
happened unfolded before my eyes as plainly as I can see a glass of Kool-aide
on a table in front of me.
The sand in the sandbox below me twisted into a swirl and then rose up
toward me as I fell. It formed a solid cushion under me and slowed me down
quickly, then dropped underneath me back to ground level. I landed on my
belly, because that’s the position I was falling in, but it didn’t
hurt because the sand had reached up to me and caught me.
I am a lot more careful in that pecan tree now. I still climb it, but
never again so high as that day.
I like my new house now better than my old one. I still miss my friends,
but my dad says I can invite them over for my birthday party next month. I
like our garden because I can play Dragon Hunter or Pirates on the
walkway. That’s fun, but I stay on the walkway because dad asked me to
be careful around the flowers and bushes.
I especially like playing in and around the sandbox in the back corner
next to the pecan tree, because of the monster that lives there. It’s
not a bad monster. It doesn’t scare me or try to get me. A couple of
weeks ago, when rain started to come down, the sand rose up and formed a
playhouse big enough to keep me from getting wet. When mom came looking
for me and found me inside the sand playhouse, she said she though I was
pretty clever for having made such a thing, but could I be a little more
careful because sand can fall down and smother me.
I told her I would be much more careful, but I didn’t tell her the
sandbox had built the playhouse and I doubted that it would ever hurt me.
I have been looking for other monsters in the new house. So far I have had
no luck in the basement, but in the attic, the curtains once blew without
the windows being open, so maybe there’s some hope there.
I like this new house, as I said, and I told my mom and my dad just that.
Then they told me about a big surprise. I am going to have a baby brother
soon. That was why we needed a bigger house.
That’s great news. I can’t wait until he can walk and I can take him
out into the back yard under the pecan tree to play with the sandbox
monster.
We will have great fun.
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