Sweet, Sweet Sleep

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K, my daughter, was asleep on the sofa in the great room this morning. The semester is ending and the room has become her base of operations for all things called university. The smaller front bedroom is her study, but the great room's 10-foot ceiling provides a feeling of openness and better "studierability" (AKA access to the kitchen). It's why I like reading in there, too. grin.

After making sure she was comfortable, I turned on the coffee maker and went outside to view the stars. It was a new moon, but the stars were shrouded in clouds, so I went back inside to ready the house for a new day.

Going from room to room, I opened plantation shutters and turned on/off lights. I took out the garbage and brought in the newspapers. I started a load of laundry, washed the dishes in the sink and loaded the dishwasher for a 9:00 am washing. Then, I prepared my bathroom for my 30-minute routine of shower, shave and get-the-heck-dressed.

The smell of fresh-brewed morning coffee eventually found me in my bedroom as I checked the status on an overnight database job. Yes, it ran! I was tickled pink as I poured a cup of coffee and added some sugar to it. As I looked into the fridge for some milk, I remembered what I was supposed to get on my way home from Cathy's house last night.

I substituted extra sugar for the missing milk and it made the ungodly tincture somewhat potable. Actually, it was horrible, but I needed something to wake me up this morning. Leaning back in my Barcolounger, I sipped the bitter nectar as I alternated between the WSJ and a French comedy on the IFC movie channel.

Soon enough, it was time for me to get ready for work. I looked over at K. She was still asleep on the sofa, dead to the world and ready for a new day when she awakened.

I had one more thing to do. I left her a note on the kitchen counter. It read:

"K, Have a Great Day! love, Dad"

My Mom would leave me similar notes on the kitchen table when I was a college commuter. She would write them before leaving for the early morning shift at McDonald's. They were my Mom's way of giving me a hug, even when she wasn't there.

She told me once, "Honey, I can't help you with your schoolwork, but I can always let you know that I'm thinkin' about you". Then she gave me hug and whispered, "You'll make it, Mike. I know that in my heart."

Those little slips of paper were found throughout my textbooks. I knew what they meant to me and how important they were. I'd look at them and know that someone back home loved me and was thinkin' about me.

And that made life just a little bit easier.

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Outside of Prescott, She Found A Tree

Within a few hours in mid-December 2005, my daughter, K, changed into the woman she always wanted to be. It happened as we looked for our Christmas tree in the Prescott National Forest.
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This was a year of new traditions in our house that was now a home. We started with Thanksgiving. Christmas would have new traditions as well.

K wanted a Christmas tree from the Prescott National Forest, so she submitted her choices to the Arizona National Forests Christmas tree lottery. As luck would have it, we were chosen and Prescott would be our destination.

This would a special trip for K. For the first time, she would cut the tree and drag it back to my truck. It was a job I had done for over twenty years in the cutting area outside Heber, Arizona, but I couldn't do it any more. She'd have to do it all.

We decided to look at the large cutting area (40 sq miles) along the Camp Wood forest service road. I remember reading about the road in an Arizona history book. In the late 19th century, it was used to transport people and goods between the gold-mining towns of Seligman, Prescott and Bagdad. Now, it was one of the old pioneer roads used by hikers, hunters and Christmas tree seekers.

The old road was dusty and wash-boarded in many places, so I let my Ford F150 float atop the ridges and slide wide through turns. I was having a ball.

I had learned to drive that way as a teenager in the family's '62 Biscayne station wagon on the backroads of Virginia. It was the kind of driving I continued to enjoy in Arizona when I joined my buddies on our monthly day hikes into the nearby wilderness areas.

I was smiling wide and goofy when I looked over at K. She gave me a look of "Dad, I like you better when you're boring". I throttled back and she smiled at me again. Yeah, Dad's are best when they're boring.

We drove as far as Yolo Ranch (with their small, dirt air strip) before doubling back to a cutting area on the near side of Camp Wood.

The area was a series of small, tree-covered rises. They were actually worn down granite outcroppings covered in a thin layer of poor soil. Later on, this made for some tricky moments as I negotiated the hills using the bow saw as a cane.

Before we left the truck to begin our search, we checked our gear and called out what we were responsible for on the team. It's something I'd learned the hard way and I didn't want her to learn it the same way I did.

After looking a bit, K found a nice, seven-foot Douglas fir tree adjacent to a closed, 4-wheeler trail. She cut it down and dragged it over to the blue plastic tarp laying on the trail. We used rope to truss the tarp around the tree and used excess rope to create a rope pull for K.

The truck was a half-mile away at the base of the scree-strewn trail. To get to the truck, she'd have to drag the tree up and down several rises. It would've been a hard pull for me even in my glory days. She did it in a remarkable amount of time and with a daypack full of emergency clothes, first-aid kits, water and a few other things.

As we hiked back to the truck, K would look back at me, making sure I was OK. She did the same thing when we stopped to rest; making sure I was OK before drinking her water. When she ran out, I gave her mine. It was a reversal of roles of when she was a little girl, but it was done with the same love and care.

We finally got to the truck and, with some carefully chosen words, loaded the tree into the truck bed. For the first time in her life, K had the special honors of attaching the bright orange Christmas tree permit to the Douglas fir. She was beaming after putting it on her tree.

We had one more thing to do. When we initially left the truck to look for the tree, I had asked my daughter to assume a huge burden. It was an old role for me, one I had learned many years ago, but I couldn't do it anymore. I would have a hard enough time trying to negotiate the hills without falling down. We needed someone who could do the job and carry it out.

K had trained for it and she knew what the job entailed. If she accepted, it would be the first time for her and she would be changed forever. It does that to everyone. K would have to be the Guardian.

She said yes and the responsibility changed her as soon as she stuffed the varmint protector into her daypack.

As we loaded our gear into the back seat, I asked K to return the object (and the responsibility) that had aged her. When it was safely in its case, I was the same person, but she had changed and she was stronger for it.

It wasn't a perfect tree, but it was a perfect Christmas tree. And K found it for us.

She also found the person she had wanted to be for many years. And as luck would have it, she was just outside of Prescott.


P.S. Congratulations, K.

Love, Dad

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