Young Writers Society

~I wrote this for school about my father, i hope you enjoy!~

It was a dark, frigid, windy night outside as I carried the terrible smelling bag of garbage out to the cans on the other side of the driveway. I was replacing the top after throwing the overflowing bag in when I heard something, something that I hadn’t heard in the longest time. It was almost like a shivery sound. Turning my head, I realized that it was just the cold wind blowing softly through the massive pine tree in my front yard. Somehow, it seemed to make an other-worldly sound that brought goosebumps to rise on my arm. In that one moment, a sound opened up a lost pool of memories that had sat untouched for so long…

Then, I was twelve years old again and sitting next to my father in the old ’85 Chevy. It was spewing toxic fumes and making both of us stick our heads out the window for a breath of fresh air as always. We had traveled almost seven miles from paved roads by the time we spotted our old white house built in the early 1830’s. We sputtered to a halt across from the massive pine tree forest where the warm summer breeze shivered through the trees. My Dad and I both slid out over the ripped polyester and into the perfect 70° air. After getting the truck into the driveway, I ran down the stone steps, past the tiger lilies and proud white house, to the wild raspberry bushes that were just turning ripe, prime for the picking.

“You can see all the way to the New Hampshire Mountains on a day like this,” Dad said, coming up behind me.

“Yeah,” I said looking up for the first time at the breathtaking scene in front of my eyes. From this house, which was on top of a thousand foot mountain, you could see for miles and miles on a clear day like this. “There’re millions of raspberries here, Dad, have some,” I offered, through mouthfuls. I closed my eyes, smiling; there was nothing better than ripe raspberries warmed by the sun.

After picking the bushes almost clean, we walked down to the pond which was the home of a bunch of frogs, turtles and sometimes a few small fish.

“Do you remember,” Dad started, “the time when you were three and stepped on that yellow jacket nest right over there?” He pointed to the spot of my demise.

“Uh-huh,” I murmured, nodding and frowning

“We saw you coming down and told you to stop but you stopped right on top of the nest!” He laughed

“I know, and then I called you from the hospital later saying, ‘Daddy I’m in the hop-it-al,’” I smiled.

We walked around at the edge of the water for a little bit, watching as the frogs and turtles dove back into the water when we approached. I picked a few brown fuzzy stalks that my father called ‘punks’, but the rest of the world called Cattails.

Dad suggested a little walk to The Sound of Music Field; it was called this because to my parents it looked just like the field that Maria runs through.

“Sure, we haven’t been up here in so long, I missed it,” I told Dad.

After we’d climbed the age-old gate used to keep the long gone cows in, we passed through clusters of wildflowers and sweet smelling plants. Queen Anne’s lace, Timothy, golden rod, clover, and thyme accompanied us on our journey. The blue skies above, golden dried plants beneath, and green luscious trees around us made it impossible to worry about anything in a place this peaceful and beautiful. We were almost there when my dad called me over to a shady spot.

“It’s trillium,” he said pointing to a white flower in the middle of three small leaves, “smell it.” Doing this, I wrinkled my nose to the terrible smell of death that invaded my nostrils. “Awful, huh?” he was smiling at the face I made. “The white ones are pretty common but the red ones are rare.” We started to talk then, about anything and everything. Dad knew all, from what kind of tree I was walking past, to the laws of physics and science, to advice for daily life.

When we reached the field, I sat down in the shade of a tall, old hickory tree. The lazy summer wind made the daisies around me nod their white and yellow heads at me. I told Dad I was going to wait here, he had to check the fences a little south; I was getting tired. I laid on my back looking into the baby blue sky, listening to the lullaby of the wind in the trees, and feeling the warm sun on my face. Soon, I was asleep…

“Natalie!” I looked up from the metal can that I had been staring at for the past twenty minutes. I’d sworn I had felt the warm sunlight, but alas it was January not June and I wasn’t in Upstate New York, but back at my home in the suburbs. “Natalie!” the voice called again. I shivered.

“Yeah, I’m coming!” I yelled back. My father was coming out now, though.

“How long have you been out here?” he asked. “What’ve you been doing?”

“Nothing,” I replied as I listened to the wind once again. “I was just looking at the stars.”

“You can’t really see much more than Orion and the Big Dipper down here; the lights of the city block out the stars.” He paused, “In the summer we’ll be up the Catskills again, there you can see anything. If it isn’t cloudy, that is.”

I nodded. I realized for the first time that it was freezing out here and that I was only wearing a small jacket. Clinging to my father, we walked back into the warm house, but not before I heard the wind in the pines one more time. I looked to my father to see if he had heard it too. We exchanged a secret smile that told me that the goosebumps on his arms were not only from the cold.