Return of the Tree Man

About three years ago, we hired a guy to trim some trees, and take down some that were severely damaged by a series of storms. His name was Dave. He was a recovering alcoholic who’d hit bottom, embarked on the recovery road, and started his own tree service. He was quiet and painfully shy, but we noticed that our two dogs immediately liked him, and our cat, who would normally hide when anyone strange came around, actually came up to introduce himself.

Dylan was three then, and he loved watching Dave work. We’d keep him a safe distance away, which wasn’t close enough for Dylan’s liking. It was clear that Dave felt more comfortable around animals and children than other adults.

Dylan started screaming, “The Tree Man’s here, the Tree Man’s here!” when Dave drove up. Dylan would then walk up to Dave and quiz him as to what his plans were for the day, what equipment he’d use, and how long the job would take. Thus, Dave would begin his work day with a "this is what I'll do" briefing, and end his day with a "this is what I did" briefing. Dave seemed to genuinely enjoy his morning talks with Dylan, and would only stop when Rhonda or I insisted that Dylan let him get to work. I think being a hero to a three year-old meant a lot to him.

Dave once told Rhonda that he had several nephews and nieces who’d lived in the area, but had moved away. He missed them.

Dave was about 90% done with our tree work when he didn’t show up one day. He called, saying he was feeling poorly, and would be by in a couple of days. He called a couple of days later to say he’d be by the following week. Then he simply quit calling.

We heard through the grapevine that Dave had started drinking again. His business and his girlfriend had left him.

Several weeks ago, Rhonda drove up to our front gate, and spotted a shape covered by a tarp sitting aside the driveway. Underneath the tarp was a chainsaw sculpture of a dinosaur, four feet tall, carved out of a solid piece of oak. There was a note. “I’ve been sober again for three weeks. I wanted to do this for Dylan because he talked so much about dinosaurs. Sorry I didn’t finish your work. Dave the Tree Man.”

"You think he knew?" I pondered Rhonda's question. "I don't see how," I replied. "I know I never mentioned it to Dave." "Me neither," said Rhonda.

The Tree Man had delivered the dinosaur on Dylan's birthday.

Three years had passed since Dylan and Dave had their series of morning briefings. I hope he’s doing well. Dylan loves his dinosaur.

Flying and Dying

Mick is a friend, a coworker, and sometimes, one of my copilots. Often, our rapport consists of good-natured, adolescent bantering of the kind found among pilots, cops, firemen, and other workplaces dominated, in terms of numbers, by men.

But sometimes, especially when we’re flying together on a long offshore flight, we talk about serious stuff. Although he carries benign obnoxiousness to an art form, Mick has a sensitive side, try as he might to hide it.

One day about two years ago, we were inbound to shore from an offshore oil platform. The flight would take an hour, and we were halfway to our base in Morgan City, Louisiana. We’d been quiet for a while when Mick’s voice came through my headset: “Do you ever think about dying in a helicopter?”

Wow. I'd never before been asked that so . . . directly. I answered, “Y’mean, say I screw up an emergency procedure?” “No,” replied Mick, “I mean from a catastrophic failure of some kind. Nothing you can do.” “Such as a main rotor separation, or a transmission failure?” I asked. (You might say I'm the kinda guy who needs things spelled out for him.) “Yeah.” Silence.

We train, both in the simulator and actual aircraft, for many emergencies. We don't train for main rotor separations, and we don't train for transmission failures. Neither event has an emergency procedure. There is nothing in the emergency checklist titled, "What to Do Before Dying."

I looked across the cockpit at Mick. “Yeah, sometimes. Most of the time, if those thoughts are there, I suppose I suppress them. But once in awhile, a bolt of unwanted awareness comes over me: I realize that in two or three minutes, I could be dead.” (Please know that I don't talk that way all the time, in case that last statement left you wary of ever meeting me in person.)

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” said Mick.

I thought for a moment. Mick's timing seemed almost scripted. A week earlier, I’d stood over my sleeping five year-old son with tears in my eyes, thinking of the pilots who’d died in helicopter accidents since I’d hired on with my employer in 1979. Over twenty guys, and most of them had left wives and kids behind. Over twenty guys, most of whom I’d known personally, to one degree or another. I looked at my little boy, and asked myself in thought, “What kind of guy leaves his family alone half the time to make a living, with the real risk he’ll never come back?” Tears filled my eyes as I looked down at him. If I truly loved my wife and son, shouldn’t I do something else?

Mick was married with a daughter, a toddler. “Mick, do you ever think that you should do something else for a living? I mean, hell, you worked in a bank back home in Ireland before you started flying, and I suppose some bank robber could have blown you away while you were at work. But, you probably wouldn’t be having this conversation if you still worked there. Do you ever think that you should do something else for the sake of your family?”

“When did you become such a pussy?” asked Mick. I laughed, a little startled by the return of Mick the Smart-Ass. “Asshole,” I shot at Mick. He laughed, and then returned to Thoughtful Mick. “Yeah, sometimes I do.”

"Me too," I said.

Five. Oh.

Last month, I turned fifty. I'm a little disappointed. Most of my friends and coworkers are five to fifteen years older, and for many of them, fifty was one of those big deals in life, a time for intense reflection, of taking stock of triumphs and regrets. A few of them bought flashy cars and started dyeing their hair.

For me, passing this particular birthday milestone has been a little anti-climactic. Yeah, it's been a little weird to think that I'm now eligible to join the AARP, and I have found myself in moments of quiet reflection as I take stock of the events of my life. Still . . . perhaps it seems not such a big deal because I became a dad relatively late in life. Perhaps it's because I got married fairly late in life. Perhaps it's because I exercise for fitness, and not in competitive endeavors that spotlight any performance decline. Perhaps it's because I recently squared off against two of my twenty-something copilots in ping pong matches and waxed both of 'em. (Heh heh, but no, I'm not gloating.)

I dunno. I suppose that if I pondered and fretted long enough, I might dredge up some trauma attached to the event, but life throws us enough curve balls. I don't feel the need to add any drama or trauma to my time on this world.

For now, I'll stick with my little white Ford Focus. The gray hair? It can stay, too. It's part of me, and part of my story.

And I'm stickin' to it.

Just One Little House

I was in my early twenties when I first recall having the dream. In the dream, I drive to my parent's house, and come to a stop abeam it. It's the house I spent my growing-up years in, between the ages of two and eighteen. But now, although the color of the house is the same, it looks darker. Now, the lawn and the tree outside haven't changed, except they look less alive.

My Mom and Dad aren't there. They're gone.

I would usually wake up from the dream with a feeling of dread. Underlying the dread was a sort of low-grade horror. My parents should always be there.

When my employer offered me a position in California in 1982, I moved back to my home town in southern California. It was wonderful to spend time with my Mom, Dad, and sister again. The dreams became less frequent, but they still came.

My dad died, suddenly, in 1991, nine years before my son was born. I had a dream one night that Dad was still alive, and that Rhonda, Dylan, and I were visiting. In the dream, Dylan was twelve instead of five, and I watched from the kitchen window as my dad and he bent over the engine of a 1959 Chevy pickup.

My mom did live to meet her grandson. She held him and talked to him and marveled over his development. When I would tell Mom about some new thing that her baby grandson had done, she would often accuse me, jokingly, of making it up. "Oh Honey, he's too young for that," she'd commonly reply. Then, as I learned later, she'd almost immediately call one of her sisters to brag about how well her precious grandson was doing in the Milestone Derby.

My Mom died in 2001, of complications from lung cancer. Dylan was fifteen months old. He remembered her until he reached three-and-a-half. Then he didn't.

My sister and I are renting out Mom and Dad's house to a young woman my sister knows. We could have sold it easily, but the young woman has a daughter, and if we sold the house, she'd have no choice to move back into a small apartment. Also, my sister and I aren't ready to let the house slip from our grasps.

In April of last year, I drove a car from home in northern California to Louisiana, where it would serve as my "airport car." I stopped for the night in Ventura, where I met an old girlfriend and her daughter for dinner. As I drove away the next morning, I made the short detour to Oxnard, and Mom and Dad's house.

It was early, and the street was quiet. I stopped across the street from the house, got out of the car, and leaned on the hood. There was the house I'd grown up in, with other people now living there. There was no sign of stirring yet from the house, nor from the entire street. I looked at the house for ten minutes or so. It looked pretty much the same, and yet it didn't. I wanted to walk up on the lawn, and perhaps pinch a leaf from the tree, but I didn't.

I got back in the car, then headed for the Pacific Coast Highway, where I passed Point Mugu, Malibu, and Santa Monica, enroute to join Interstate 10 eastbound.

I remember thinking, "I need to walk into the house, someday."

I will. Someday.