Carol’s Column

I guess other mothers have trees too ...

I MUST be mad.

Here I am in the middle of the night making leaves for my son the tree.

Oh, my late grandmother would dance the kazatzka in her grave if she could only see her third, youngest great-grandson now.

For she had great aspirations for him. “A doctor or a lawyer, even a nuclear physicist — I don’t mind what you do — as long as it’s a profession.”

A tree?

Jamie sprung it on us about three weeks or so ago.

Admittedly, he was diffident about the whole thing.

“Ma,” he said at breakfast as I lovingly dished up his home-made muesli and chopped-up apples — so good for growing knees. “I can’t walk Nicky home today, I’ve got play practice.”

“Super,” I muttered. My stock 7am response.

I said ‘super’ when they told me the dog had attacked a scooter, when they announced my car had been stolen, when we ran out of bread, when the sewerage blocked.

It’s the only word I can spit out at such an early hour. It takes time for my voicebox to warm up. Usually by 9am I manage a whole sentence.

“Ma, so will you fetch Nicky?” asked Jamie patiently. “You know you don’t like her walking home alone in case she gets attacked, knocked on the head or molested by an unsavoury stranger.”

“Super,” I repeated.

Jamie shook his head in despair. “Ma!” he wailed loudly, very loudly.

It was then the penny dropped.

“Play practice? What play practice?”

“I’m in the school play.”

“So, what part are you?”

“I’m a co-opted tree.”

“A co-opted tree?”

“They needed two trees so they picked the two Std 5s who looked most like trees. Richard Stevens was one, I’m the other,” he muttered disconsonantly.

“Don’t you want to be a tree?”

“Would you?” he asked with feeling. “It’s gross.”

My son the reluctant tree.

A few days later — the subject of Jamie’s treeship cropped up while we were having dinner.

Most things surface at the diningroom table in our household I guess.

A debate on what to vote in the coming constitution referendum raged thick and fast.

The left-hand side of the table and Liquorice-the-labrador going strongly for ‘yes’ — the right-hand side of the table and Harold Wilson-the-goldfish voting strongly no.

“Give them a chance, it’s a step in the right direction.”

“Shut your mouth when you chew.”

“A ‘yes’ means you’re supporting entrenched dictatorship.”

“Stop digging your elbows into me.”

“It’s a courageous step.”

“Stop slurping your food.”

“It’s supporting apartheid.”

When Jamie slammed his fist on the table.

“This debate is immoral,” he said with feeling. “You’ve all lost sight of what you’re voting for. There can be only one vote. NO!”

“What do you know? said my oldest son in disgust, “you’re only a tree.”

Which changed the subject to more important things.

“Are you a talking tree?” I asked Jamie with pride.

“Ma,” this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen,” said Jamie, “we just stand there for an hour.”

“You don’t like being a tree?”

“No, it’s boring.”

“Well, get into it. Wiggle your branches a bit, wave your trunk. Be a swinging tree.”

“We’re not allowed to move,” he said in a tone of disgust.

A week ago Richard Steven’s mother phoned me.

“Carol, don’t worry about costumes. I’ve got some old, brown material. I’ll quickly sew two trunks for the boys.”

“Super,” I murmured. It was a 7am call.

Then, a few days ago, Jamie announced he needed branches and leaves for school. So we sent him off to school waving two freshly-cut branches with bright, green, spring oak leaves.

He arrived home with a long face.

“They were rejected. The leaves, I mean. Moira Winslow says you’ve got to make leaves for branches.”

“Why, what’s wrong with these? If they’re good enough for God, why aren’t they good enough for your play?”

“Ma, she wants paper leaves.”

Which is why at 2am I am still sitting up drawing, cutting and stitching paper leaves to a branch.

I was given explicit instructions on how to make them. These are not your run-of-the-mill paper leaves. Oh no, for my son the tree — only the best.

These are multi-coloured leaves with fuse wire zig-zag-stitched to their backs to make them droopless so they may shine in the spotlight.

It’s tough being a mother.

As I got to my 78th leaf I couldn’t help thinking of costumes long since past.

A disastrous munchkin mother for the ‘Wizard of Oz’, it was only at the first dress rehearsal we discovered I’d forgotten to leave openings for the munchkins’ heads.

In ‘Circus’ I stitched the clowns’ pompoms on back to front. Then there was the tailless pink panther with the alsatian ears, not to mention the fish with scales going the wrong way.

Was I failing in my duty as a mother? Should I perhaps have hired Peter Soldatos or Greta Abrahamson to make all these costumes over the years?

I was determined to succeed with the leaves.

Next morning, I left my completed branch propped up against the fireplace, the turquoise, purple and scarlet leaves glinting in the early morning light.

“What is it?” said Jamie when he came down to breakfast.

“That’s your costume — your branches, I thought I’d jazz things up a little. Don’t you like them?”

“Spastic,” he said, “they’re spastic.”

It is not easy to decipher exactly what kids say these days. But I got the drift. He did not care for his branches.

I was hurt.

To the quick indignant, cut to the core.

“What’s wrong with your branches?”

“Ma, when did you last see a purple, turquoise and scarlet tree?” he said resignedly.

“Jamie, that’s what acting’s all about. Whoever heard of a rotten, dull, green tree. I want you to be a shining tree.”

He shuddered.

“Ma, it doesn’t even look like a tree.”

Just then, Henry-the-hog, our warthog-resembling scottie trotted up to the branches. Sniffed delicately, wagged his tail and lifted his sturdy little leg.

I could have hugged him.

Everyone needs a friend.

Who says it doesn’t look like a tree. Henry knows a good tree when he sees one.

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