Forever with His Edith

You will not Fall

Second Grade- December

"Come on, Edith!" Noah ran ahead of me to a large tree in his backyard. His feet stomped loudly on the dying grass below. "You're only here for a little while longer before you have to go home!"

We had decided it was time I learned to climb a tree.

I tried to keep up with his quick pace, but my little legs couldn't move fast enough. My scuffed Mary Janes hit the grass and crunched with each step I took. My breath escaped my lips in a white puff, the frigid air slapping at my cheeks.

Noah waited at the base of the tree, looking up to see the best path to climb when I arrived beside him. I remembered how he told me he broke his arm when I first met him in pre-k, falling from his tree house his father had made him.

This tree was humongous, looming over us as if proud of how tall it had grown. Its trunk was very wide, easily three of Mr. Winters' body. It's bumpy roots dug into the ground, covered in leaves that crackled when stepped on. It had many branches, reaching outwards as if it had arms and was waving hello. This was Noah's favorite tree.

I hoped he wouldn't fall out of this tree today because the school was staging a play tomorrow for the second-grade class. Noah had a lead part as George Washington and they hadn't written a broken arm into the script. Gratefully, all I had to do for my part of the play was hand a plastic knife to one of the generals and stand in the background the whole time. Even so, Mrs. Winters had made me a whole costume with a large skirt and blue top.

"Okay, this is how this works. You gotta jump up... well you have to... well I'll lift you up so you can grab onto that branch right there." Noah seemed to notice that I would never be able to reach even the shortest branch on the tree without a little assistance.

"So you stand right here and raise your arms up and I'll lift you. Then pull yourself up!" I raised my arms, a bit challenging because Noah's extra jacket he had let me borrow was too big for my small frame. I felt like a marshmallow and the extra material bunched at my shoulders and landed at my knees.

Noah wrapped his arms around my thighs and lifted me to under the branch and I grabbed onto it with both of my arms, feeling my back twitch where Momma had hit me.

"Pull up, pull up! You got it." I used all of my strength to pull myself up, but I wasn't strong enough in the slightest. Momma had beat me the night before and my body protested at the unfamiliar movement. I struggled, making my own little cloud from all of the air I was expelling.

Before I knew it, I was falling from the branch because my arms decided to give out. Noah was still underneath me, so I accidentally dropped right onto him. We both landed on the ground, sprawled out and laughing.

"Well, that didn't work!" Noah giggled, catching his breath because I knocked it out of him.

We tried again. "This time, Edith, you're going to hang from the branch for a bit and I'm going to turn around, so you can stand on my shoulders and then it should be a lot easier to get on the branch."

I did as he said. While standing on his shoulders it was a lot easier to pull myself up. He whooped when I straddled the branch and scooted as close to the tree trunk as possible. I felt my tights snag on the bark and knew they would tear. Momma would beat me for tearing my tights, but I was in a tree!

Noah jumped up and grabbed onto the tree, pulling himself up without even a little struggle. One day I hoped I could be strong like him. "Look at us. You did it! Isn't this awesome?"

I watched Noah with my back against the trunk of the tree. His cheek and nose were red from the cold and he was bundled up in a blue, plaid jacket. His light hair was crazy, frizzy and sticking up every which way; the fuzzy hat he had been wearing lost somewhere in the grass. Noah was smiling, looking around his backyard as if seeing it in a new light. He looked at me and his smile became wider, likely excited to see me in his favorite tree.