|MIRACULOUS| Flipped

4- The Sycamore Tree

Mari sat outside with her dad, watching him paint. "I see why you like to come out here," she said with a smile.

Tom looked over with a smile of his own. "Would you mind explaining it to your mother?"

I loved to watch my father paint. Or really, I loved to hear him talk while he painted. I learned a lot about my dad that way. He told me all sorts of things like how he got his first job delivering hay, and how he'd wished he'd finished college.

Then one day he surprised me.

"What's going on with you and, uh, Adrien Agreste?"

Tom turned to her with a knowing look as he stopped painting momentarily. Mari tried to fight her smile from growing too much.

"What do you mean?" She asked evasively. "Nothing."

"Oh, okay," Tom replied casually then returned to painting. "My mistake."

Mari couldn't let it go. "Why would you even think that?"

"No reason," Tom said, cleaning his brush and choosing another color to use. "Just that you..." he paused to shrug. "Talk about him all the time."

"I do?" Mari asked with a sheepish smile.

Tom looked at her and smiled, amused. "Mmm-hmm." He confirmed, then remained quiet for her to talk. 

Mari looked down as she tried to find the words to say. "I don't know," she started then looked up but focused her eyes on the painting rather than watching her dad's reaction. "I guess it's something about his eyes. Or maybe his smile."

Tom nodded slightly. "But what about him?"

"What?" Mari asked, not understanding.

"You have to look at the whole landscape."

"What does that mean?"

Tom smiled gently. "A painting is more than the sum of its parts," he told her, then continued to add to his painting. "A cow by itself is just a cow. A meadow by itself if just grass, flowers. And the sun peeking through the trees is just a beam of light. But you put them all together and it can be magic."

I didn't really understand what he was saying until one afternoon when I was up in the sycamore tree. I was rescuing a kite.

Mari climbed the sycamore tree higher and higher, growing more and more cautious with every place she put her hands and feet. However, when the breeze hit her, she caught the smell of something wonderful that she hadn't experienced before. Then she started to notice the scene that unfolded before her once she was out of the thickest of leaves.

There was a field of green grass, stretched as far as she could see with trees here and there. There was a bit of industry on the far side, a farmer's barns. And the sky was so blue, with puffy white clouds scattered across. The scene, as well as the birdsong around her, took her breath away.

It was a long way up, higher than I'd ever been, and the higher I got, the more amazed I was by the view. I began to notice how wonderful the breeze smelled. Like sunshine and wild grass. I couldn't stop breathing it in, filling my lungs with the sweetest smell I'd ever known.

"Hey, you found my kite!"

Mari looked down just after she had reached the kite and removed it from the wedge in the branches it had been stuck on. It was Adrien, standing there on the ground under the tree looking up at her with a smile.

"Adrien, you should come up here," she told him, wanting to share the magnificent view with him. "It's so beautiful."

"I can't!" He called. "I sprained my, um... I have a rash!"