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A place for Writing 12 students to read each other's writing, to critique, to suggest, to improve.
About Me
- Brad
- Former adult teacher who loves island beaches. Happy homebody and family man; once devoted dog owner, now without Tashi, my Tibetan Terrier. I prefer the absurdity of the imagination to the absurdity of imagining nothing.
4 comments:
My favourite tree was the old cherry tree in my parents’ backyard in New Westminster. The tree was quite large, about seven meters high with a trunk about a meter around or so. Every spring the tree had masses of whitish-pink blossoms. You might think we had lots of cherries, but this was a sour cherry tree, not sweet and very popular with the birds and squirrels.
It was a favourite of mine because it was the home of my second (or third?) treehouse. The first treehouse we built beside my friend Rory’s house in about 1966 or 67. As was usual at the time, we “found” our materials around at various building sites in the neighbourhood. In those days kids were able to enter houses under construction to see what we could see and/or find. We even “liberated” some wood from our old elementary school I’m a bit ashamed to say.
I guess that contractors in those days expected a little “shrinkage” in building materials. There were no fenced enclosures in those days; maybe a sign saying “No Trespassing” but not even that at times. Certainly, we could always find bits and pieces in the pile of saw cuts and use them to build our structure. Pity the poor trees because the first step was to bang a few nails into the trunk to hold our 2 by 6 boards that would provide our base.
Then, we would nail on anything we could find to make a floor. The cherry tree had only a basic floor and a rope we could use to climb up to our platform. Once we got up there, there wasn’t much to do. But it was away from the parents, so it became a place where we could experiment with various things.
One popular activity was trying out new swear words! As we got older, we used to sneak a cigarette up there as well. My teenage friends were kind of envious since not everyone had a tree big enough (or parents who would allow a treehouse high enough to fall out of and break your neck from) to use.
I think I’ve mislead you. Really, my favourite treehouse was in a tree on the south slope of Burnaby near what is now the Edmonds Skytrain station. There we had not only a fine platform, a hidden ladder and a hatchway, but also had a door of sorts and a lock! We also had a roof.
My friend Ray (from Grade 7) and I would sit up there in the forest and read comics and chat for hours. Considering it was a treehouse in a public location, it lasted for quite awhile. But then the inevitable happened—we came by one day to find it broken into, our comics stolen and things pretty much wrecked. We didn’t cry over it too much. Ray and I entered highschool the next year and playing in the bush (as we called it) became beneath our dignity. Besides, girls became much much more interesting at that point.
--509 words
My favourite tree was a huge, old maple tree (I think it was maple because I remember the beautifully-shaped leaves) that grew inside our yard when I was growing up. I still think of that tree, even now as an adult, as a major part of my happy memories as a child. I’m not sure why. It seemed to have significance, I guess, because I played in our yard so much. And in the fall, those big, beautiful leaves turned a bright orange and covered our pathway and the corner of our lawn.
One time, when I was about six or seven, I remember playing near that tree with our next-door neighbour’s daughter on their swing set. Only, there were no actual swings, it was just the frame left standing. So she and I were taking turns, I think, holding onto the top crossbar and letting ourselves swing back and forth on it, kicking our legs out high.
Well, I was a small kid for my age and also must have been standing too close at one point, because as she kicked a leg up, she kicked me in the eye. It kind of went black for me for a moment, but then I was alright. I didn’t even end up with a bruise. It may have been my right eye because in my adulthood, my right eye has always been a bit weaker than my left. I can’t be sure of the reason but that’s my explanation for it.
I do remember being really scared, though, when it happened, thinking of how fragile our eyes are and that I might lose that eye. Thank God, it was just a minor accident!
--285 words
I grew up in a rice fields surrounded by myriad of trees. Amongst these trees, my favorite was a mango tree planted in our backyard. It has huge branches with thick green leaves. It grows as tall as four-storey building. Whenever I feel bored that time, I climbed this tree with my story book to read and relax on one of the huge branches that could hold my back and buttocks.
During summertime, mango trees start to bear flowers inside and outside of its branches like a Christmas tree. Later on, its flowers turned to mango fruits. Out of one stem it consists of five to ten mangoes. The mangoes grow bigger and bigger until six months. While the fruits are hanging on its stems with a yellowish color, the mango fruit is beginning to ripe and ready for picking. I also enjoyed green mango being dipped in a salted shrimps. O, yummy. I remember that my family members and I had enjoyed eating those mangoes until our tummies ached.
Would you believe out of one mango tree, you can harvest three to four pails? It was so good to have these mango trees as its fruits were very sweet and addicting.
--200 words--
The Old Banyan Tree
I still remember that afternoon of my childhood. I cried and ran to that tree in the nearby vacant lot after my mom punished me for pushing my little sister because she destroyed my drawing. The green canopy of banyan was dotted with sparkling sunlight affably shining above my eyes telling me, "Don't cry, every thing will be all right!"
I didn't know how long had that tree been in there exactly, but it was so big that seemed to have been for a hundred. Banyan doesn't have flowers as graceful as magnolia, or as gorgeous as ceiba. Instead, their flowers are white or greenish, and small enough to be ignored. However, that banyan notably rose in this district and accompanied the residents for generations.
Every day, I played with neighbour kids around that tree—playing tag, hide and seek, marbles, paper doll stickers, the eagle catching the chicks; it was also the start and terminal of our bike racing. We laughed, yelled, ran, chased until the dusk, until the time to go home for watching cartoon, for dinner. Sometimes it was the giant green umbrella when there was suddenly a hard short shower.
My parents and neighbour adults liked to sit down and chat under the banyan as well—old men played yueqin (a kind of Taiwanese two-strings instrument) and intoned the old ballads, or told their past while having tea; housewives had a gossip, exchanged information from each other, or played with their toddlers while they hung the quilts drying here. It a cool place to relax as well as build the interpersonal relationship.
That banyan was the popular tree and the place where residents loved to stay. One of my favourite things was to join the elders' group hearing ghost stories in summer evenings. The most fun thing under the banyan was having special activities—eating moon cakes, shaddocks in the moonlight at Mid-August.
The banyan tree was just like a dad stretches his arms to protect his children, like a mother extends her hands to comfort her babies. It was the place I would shelter from sadness and the one I'd like to share with my happiness. Even though I didn't see it after all residents moved out of there in thirty years ago for urban renewal, the banyan still remands in my heart.
--386 words
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