It was a dark and stormy night about last Wednesday when Kit came to me with concern etched into his tiny face.
“Mum,” he squeaked, “I’m worried about the trees.”
“What trees?” I asked.
“All those green things outside the window!” he exclaimed, “Surely you’ve noticed them out in the storm! Animals can go in a burrow or a den. And birds just go on summer holidays to Bali. But the trees are stuck in the mud. In a storm. In the nude! And there are bits of broken branches everywhere. That’s like tree arms and legs.”
So, I patiently explained about evolution, how trees have evolved to deal with storms, and how they can grow new branches. “That’s like you or me growing new arms and legs!”
When he said, “Wow! But it must still hurt,” I said that trees don’t feel pain.
And he said, “But how do you know?”
And I said, “I don’t know,”
And he said, “Then why did you say that?”
So I said, “It is widely accepted.”
Then he said, “Where does it say that on Google?”
And it was about then that ‘we’ decided to help the trees.
I had to prove I was serious, “And not just waiting, and hoping I’ll forget about it,” said Kit.
So, I sighed inwardly, wrapped us up in most of our clothing and a bit of somebody else’s, and we embarked on a Perilous Expedition. As we set off into the driving rain, Kit immediately directed me to the local play area, where he was certain he had seen a tree in need. By the time he had persuaded me to bandage a branch onto a grass tree (they don’t have branches, by the way), I was certain that his true motive was not to minister to trees but to be allowed to play on the swings after dark. He vindicated my suspicion by asking to play on the swings.
Kit was to later refer to our ‘Perilous Exhibition,’ and after bandaging bits of a tree to another tree in a storm, in front of several dedicated, sideways-glancing dog-walkers, I actually prefer his terminology.
While I was pushing him on a swing, Kit asked, “Do you think the trees might be cold? Should we put some blankets on them?”
Not wishing to look like an idiot twice in one evening, I told him that trees are cold-blooded; a gamble that possibly didn’t pay off. When Kit grows up, I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do, but at least I managed to talk him out of the blankets.