An Ice Pack, Mommy Kisses and a Lollipop

As a child, you get many boo-boos. Heck, as adults we still sustain injuries. The only difference is, when you’re little, an ice pack, mommy kisses, and a lollipop can heal many of those bumps and bruises. OK, well, sometimes you have to throw in a Band-Aid or two, as well.

I feel like this spring we’re going to have a drama entitled “Manda vs. the Tree” in production for most of the season in my backyard. My child has been determined to climb the one and only tree inside the bounds of our fenced in property since she was an itsy bitsy little thing. The problem is, the former owners of our home decided that the low branches weren’t to their liking on this poor tree, so they had them hacked off. This does not make for your ideal tree-climbing tree, but it’s the only one we’ve got.

So now, my 7-year-old is excited because she can finally grasp the lowest branch of the lonely tree, which is about five feet off the ground, if she stands on her tip toes on her choice of a crate, bucket, or semi-stable toy in the backyard. She has engineered her plan of attack for years, diagrams included.

Three days ago she reported that she could climb across the entire length of the monkey bars on her swing set in the yard; therefore, she concluded she had this amazing arm strength, and she was prepared to conquer THE TREE. She said she had to “rest up” and would attempt her climbing challenge the next day.

So the next day rolled around, and she carefully moved a crate out of her clubhouse that doubles as a storage bin and a chair, to the proper position on the ground beneath the lowest tree branch and ... heave-ho! She found herself hanging from the tree branch. She thought that was a cool achievement but wanted greater bragging rights.

So she bounced into the house and asked me to lift her into the tree. OK, she’s 48 pounds of squiggly, unbalanced human body, and I can lift her, but not above my head. I was flattered by her faith in me. She fully thought that I could do anything. Can’t all mothers? I, however, wanted to prove to her that hoisting her to extreme heights was not even something my super Mom Mom powers could achieve.

I gave into her demands and went outside and lifted her as high as I could. She somehow managed to get her upper body over the lowest limb and looked like a fish out of water as her belly balanced on the branch. Now what? She turned to me for advice.

I can do many things, but tree climbing is not one of them. My brother got all of the tree climbing genes. He and his friends would spend entire summers up in the trees, I swear, clocking more time than the birds. They even climbed those lanky pine trees that you find in South Jersey to towering heights, and defied the handcutting bark that gave them blisters on their fingers. Me, I would need rock climbing gear, gloves to protect  the manicure, spikes on my shoes, and someone to hoist me up high with a rope if I was going to mount a spindly spire.

Advice? “Well, Manda," I said, “you have two choices as far as I can tell. You can go up, or go down. That’s about it.”

Her face froze in a look of horror and she had no idea how she was going to go in either direction. So she figured down was good. Down? At that point, my face mimicked her expression because I had no idea how to get my child out of the tree.  This is not one of those things they tell you in the hospital when your child is born.  As far as I know there is no “How to Be a Parent” handbook that explains on page 63 how to remove your child from trees. There is no iPhone app for this–I checked.  “Good grief,” as Charlie Brown would say.

Manda said “Catch me!” There she goes again, building up my ego, thinking that yes, I can successfully catch a 48-pound flying child mid-air and neither of us will wind up broken in pieces on the ground. “No! Stop! Don’t let go!” yells me, the hysterical mother on the ground, holding her arms up as if to believe that maybe they do have super human strength  to break a seven year old’s fall and I have just been in denial for all of these years.

Well, the funny thing about gravity is that unless you have a parachute or a jet pack, if you let go of a tree branch, you will proceed in the downward direction. No question about it. Manda tested this theory. Perhaps it can be her experimental demonstration at the next school science fair. Hah! Newton and his falling apples–take that!

Somehow she magically landed on her feet and her hands were a bit scraped from tree bark, but she was no worse for the wear, but my nerves were. The only thing broken was a dead spindly twig from the tree. Manda wonders if we could glue it back on. Meanwhile, my mind came up with a new commandment: Thou shalt not lift child into a tree. If a child goes up, a child must come down. We closed the book on tree climbing chapter two that day, and I really thought at that point Manda would realize that the tree won. Silly me. The battle had just begun.

The following day, Manda put on her blue jacket, her play sneakers and tree climbing gloves, and headed outside again. Yes, I said tree climbing gloves. Apparently she determined that she did not have adequate gear on the day before, which prevented her from successfully climbing the tree. So she went into the garage, found her gardening gloves, and donned them in preparation for yet one more tree climbing adventure.

I watched her while peeking out the window as I prepared dinner and fed the dog.  I wasn’t staring at her, but I knew she was basically OK playing in the yard. Before I knew it, she was taking out her crate again and repositioning it under the tree. Boy, this kid was determined. I rationalized with myself saying all kids like to climb trees–let her. Manda mounted the crate and stretched. Her hands grabbed that lonely lowest of the branches and she pulled and hoisted. She wrapped her legs around the trunk and she scraped the soles of her shoes against its sides. She was actually making progress, and in the upward direction. 

Then, I heard “thud,” followed by a “waaah!” Uh oh. By my calculations the tree won, yet again. A gimpy girl came to the back door, bruised and battered on her legs and with a small scrape on her hands. Ouch. That hurt. The crate broke her fall, and let’s just say it wasn’t soft. A few kisses, a lollipop, and an ice pack later, the tears were gone, and I think her ego was bruised more than any other part of her.  The tree won that day, too. Tree 3, Manda 0. The war is on.

Note to self: Buy a BIG bag of lollipops, consider investing in ice pack stock, and be ready as always, with plenty of kisses.

Photo courtesy of ChristinaAnneM Photography. To find out more about this nature photographer, you can get a glimpse in another one of my blog posts on Patch: "".