Sebastian Mudry

Listen to the voice of this tree

It’s the time of year to cut down a fir balsam, transport it on car rooftop, set it in a stand filled with water, and luxuriate in the aroma of fresh pine. Why then does one tree haunt me?

This tree was not meant to ever be brought down by the hand, or rather the chainsaw, of man. The beech towered over a fifty foot span of my absent New Jersey neighbor’s front lawn, canopied generations of childhood picnics, from the Chase’s of West Harwich to my former wife's grand niece. Seven year old Jessie’s favorite, she would climb into the tree’s arms, become cradled in her lower branches.

Not a hint of disease in 130 to 150 years (I get a variable number when I count rings).

A century and a half of glory could give a healthy tree respect, admiration.

She had earned affection, awe.

Is it so silly to miss a tree?

What’s maddening is how this living, breathing magnificence was felled in all innocence, by duplicity and greed.

A tree may have a voice, if we might only hear.

I was fifty seasons strong when the Chase ones planted here. They used trunks and branches of my cousins to frame up the walls and to sheath the dwelling.

I was afraid they’d cut into me or cut me down, but I heard whispers of beautiful, always, build around her, our anchor. I felt safe. The tips of my fingers reached down to touch and tickle all who moved beneath me.

In the hundred cold-times since then I saw, felt and heard high winds from storms, hurricanes, blizzards that blanketed me in white, and darkened the lights so I could see the stars like I could when I was a twig, a hundred and fifty cold-times ago. I bent, swayed, danced, never breaking.

The one beside me embraced me, along with the chickadees and nuthatch that nestled, slept, and nested, in my arms.

Chipmunks, squirrels, fox, and deer, scampered away with my dropped seeds, murmured sweet, delicious. A few looked up to thank me for these gifts that sustained them.

This season I was as healthy and vital as when the Chase family built around me. I breathed in carbon dioxide and exhaled oxygen, soaked in the sun to make sugars to feed me. I fed the world around me with shade, and had what the breezes called beauty, grace, a spirit, majesty, a presence.

I heard harsh rustles around me, heard disease, power line through branches, winter threat, we cut down trees, make a living. That one accused me of being a locust.

Another of the moving roots put down the buzzing thing. The last voiced from this one was, don’t. Not right. Healthy, Strong. Wrong.

The one who called me diseased, a locust, did not listen.

Listen to the voice of this tree, appeared in the Cape Cod Times, Sebastian Mudry, guest columnist. Go to (capecodonline.com) for a link. (Revised April 26, 2022.)

Contact: sebastianmudry(at)comcast.net

Danny Was Fine China

Danny was the son who brought presents home to our mother.

Leaves, a stone, a dead butterfly. Proudly cupped a pocketed spring peeper, held in hands as brown as the mud puddle of the vernal pond from which he scooped it. Dandelions and Queen Anne’s Lace were placed in a jam jar, centered on the Formica top of the kitchen table.

Danny at 13, attacked by gangs in Edenwald, transformed from explorer to brittle star. He still took things apart, a radio, an old telephone, anything with wires. Indoors he was safe.

Thin skin, pale from this inside world, became near translucent, while we, his tanned older brothers, were thick melamine, the unbreakable pink stuff we used. Danny was like fine china.

Home-schooled in junior high, Danny was buffered from the knees and elbows of the external world, but day and night terrors visited where there had been a sweet sneak of a boy.

Danny at age Five

We’re fishing upstate with Uncle Metro. Everybody’s favorite, Metro (sounds like meetro) drives us to Kensico Dam and beyond. We try earthworms to tempt what swims by. His instructions: “Wait ‘till the bobber dips, no, wait until you see it dip under, now, raise the tip of your pole, set the hook.”

Five kids, three brothers, our two cousins, Metro’s daughter Stephanie, stepdaughter Janie, each with a bamboo pole.

Five minutes later Janie drops her pole onto the bank. She studies dragonflies, water skimmers, looks up at clouds, reaches into a jar, bites down on a pickle. The rest of us land six inch whoppers and not so whoppers half that size.

We catch and release, dazzled by the flash as they splash away. Re-catch them or haul in naive brethren, release, until we have our fill of fat sunfish and slim yellow perch.

Smiles all 'round, we unwrap our sandwiches at bankside, wash our hands like raccoons, and munch away. Janie’s sandwich is tall with pickles and ham, ours with ham and cheese, mayonnaise, no pickles.

Laughter escalates with the size of our catch, Janie the exception, as each brags: “I caught the biggest one.” “I got the biggest.” “No, I got the whopper.” “No, me ...”

We’re filled with ourselves and the delicious fatigue of a full warm summer day as we board Metro’s jalopy. It has a lingering aroma of dog, ‘though Spike is home.

We doze off in the repetitive rocking of the car. Halfway home, Metro veers to the side of the road, whips onto the shoulder, stones kick up, gravel crunches, he brakes hard. Now we are awake, alert.

“What smells so bad? WHEW. Gawd. What STINKS in here?”

“Not me,” the chorus. He hauls us out of the car, sniffs around each one. Metro zones in on the youngest. A car without AC and the heat of the day conspire to give him away. “OK, Danny boy. WHAT. Is, in, your pockets? Turn ‘em out, inside out.”

From one pants pocket out pop two ripe three inch crappies, another, a perch. A back pocket hid something squished and scaly, a pan fish pancake.

“WHY? ... Why?” Metro implores.

“I wanna show my mudda.”

Danny Was Fine China, an excerpt from Son of a Thief, Sebastian Mudry

My memoir, Son of a Thief, is planned for release in 2022.

A Bronx Boy's Christmas Story, for ages eight to ninety-eight,

is available on Amazon.

(An illustrated tale of two extraordinary gifts, each with profound impact. This short story is for young readers to 'young-at-heart' at age 98. The boy - me - does, then, believe in Santa.) 'HO, HO, HO ...'

The book is a delightful Christmas present, packed with joy.)

Email: sebastianmudry(at)comcast.net

Sebastian Mudry is a graduate of Evander Childs High School,

Hunter College in the Bronx (BA, Psych major), University of Connecticut (MA, Developmental Psych), University of Massachusetts, Amherst, (EdD, Counseling). He taught psychology at Manchester Community College for more than three decades, and did group co-therapy and individual therapy for a Manchester, Connecticut, psychiatrist for over a decade.