My First Crush Part III
Gardening was important to my father. His rose garden was his pride and joy. He was a brilliant attorney-at-law and dedicated many hours to his chosen profession at his office. He would come home and work some more from his make-shift office in the sunroom on the east side of the house he and my mother built. To the chagrin of my mother; but to the delight of the French Hand Laundry in Pasadena, my father would venture into his rose garden directly from the car without changing out of his suit. Occasionally on a Saturday, I was asked to help with other gardening chores. The roses were not for novitiates. It was on such a Saturday that I had a memory relapse.
As you will remember from last week, I had experienced a verbal malfunction at a luncheon with friends of my parents. Having spent the balance of that day and evening in my room reflecting on my misuse of language and in particular the word “fuck”; I cleaned up my public language in a manner that my parents deemed appropriate. However, senior moments are not solely the province of seniors. Sometimes younger people have lapses of memory. It was just such an occasion I experienced on a warm fall afternoon.
Our home had two very large maple trees in the front yard and even in warm Southern California, these deciduous trees lost their leaves in the fall. Since picking up leaves did not require the same technical skill as caring for roses, I was assigned the duty of raking up the leaves from said maple trees. Perhaps it has not escaped your notice that Maple Trees like Pine trees have a certain secretion of sap, the fluid that circulates in the vascular system of the plant. Maple syrup on pancakes is great but when it is on your hands and the rake you are holding; it is less than perfect. Thus, it was, while I was working on raking the maple leaves with my father in the same area, I registered my displeasure with the aforementioned sap --- “Fuck, this fucking sap is all fucking over me!!!”. A triple “fuck” in the same sentence. Oops, a senior moment of memory loss, but my father did not forget and after admonishing me for the use of the word “fuck” I was told to go to my room and think about my language
The Good News
No more raking Maple leaves!!!! All in all, it wasn’t a bad outcome.