SpinDyeKnit

Thursday November 02nd 2017, 10:43 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Life,Mango tree

I’m picturing Maddy two weeks ago, rocking in toddler exuberance next to me: “Read it AGIN! AGIN!”

He’s about 13. He cat-sits, including for a friend’s elderly cat that needed its meds while its owner had to go out of town and who was very grateful to him for the help. Just a really great kid. And so it finally occurred to me that I could ask if he would mango-tree-sit, too, keeping it covered by night and uncovered by day.

So I sent an email to his mom.

And I got this note back from him:

——

Hello,

This is (editorial note: let’s change it to Jacob). I’d love to take care of your tree. I could stop by with my mom tomorrow between 4 and 5 so you can show me what to do. Will that work? You can pay me $5 for both days.

If it has any favorite books to be read at night, let me know.

Thanks

——–

(I of course promptly upped his pay quite a bit, remember when I was a teenage babysitter and hated it when people asked me how much I charged and how I always asked for too little. I wanted him to be glad he took this on for me.)

Meantime, I guffawed at that note and then read it out loud for my wondering sweetie, who guffawed in turn and promptly found and ordered this: a children’s book about a tree in the forest decorated with things for the wildlife to share. The perfect story.

Maybe it’ll even come in time. Go Jacob!

7 Comments

7 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Oh my goodness! And you KNOW he will do his job and read that book each night.

Comment by Afton 11.03.17 @ 4:07 am

I admit I had to read that twice…

Go Jacob!

Comment by Suzanne in Montreal 11.03.17 @ 5:52 am

and which book is that?

Comment by Mary H 11.03.17 @ 6:12 am

Absolutely delightful! So happy you found someone to “tree sit” that is thoughtful and kind! I will love hearing any more stories about how he and the tree fared! ~chris

Comment by chris 11.03.17 @ 6:27 am

I love the image of him sitting and reading to the tree. Maybe turning the book to make sure it can see all the pictures…thanks for the smile!

Comment by ccr in MA 11.03.17 @ 6:34 am

My link broke while I was trying to get those paragraphs to format correctly and I didn’t notice it. I just put it back in there. It’s Night Tree, by Eve Bunting.

Comment by AlisonH 11.03.17 @ 8:48 am

I purchased 2 copies of the book, and they will go with the Advent calendars to the grandchildren. Each family will get one. They arrived here yesterday, a very sweet book!

Comment by Mary H 11.09.17 @ 6:35 am

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>