That darn Indy.
She just dragged them into our home months ago and I’m now beginning to wonder if, on my wages, I’ll be responsible for their college education.
“Did you hear that, Daddy?” Indy will ask me, wide-eyed, spoonful of asparagus frozen a foot away from her mouth.
“I’m a little hard of hearing sometimes, Honey,” I answer. “Hear what?”
“That noise on the roof?”
It’s dark. I stare long and hard outside.
I’m in the midst of a zealous crusade for the next 50 years to make sure my 4-year-old eats a proper serving of fruits and vegetables every day.
“Tell you what. You eat two small bites of asparagus and we’ll go outside and investigate the sound.”
Indy promptly wolfs down Spoonfuls #1 and #2 without so much as a grimace. I grab a flashlight, but no jackets for us. As a parent, you quickly develop a criminal mind. No jackets means you have to quickly announce that it’s too cold to be outside and that we have to get back in and finish dinner.
The beam from the powerful flashlight illuminates the roof and the big oaks that shade our 120-year-old home that started as a log cabin.
“You were right, Daughtery,” I announce.
“What.” It’s not so much a question. Just a habit.
“The noise. Look. Up there. It’s the tree house all right,” I pause. “The — magic — tree house.”
“Jack and Annie!” Indy yells.
Right on cue, my daughter’s imaginary friends arrive in time for dinner. Their mode of transportation is unconventional, but practical. Their tree house can fly through time and space to any location in or beyond imagination. Jack and Annie are the protagonists in author Mary Pope Osborne’s “Tree house Series.”
We’ve been reading stories to Indy since she was a few weeks old and one of our comfortable rhythms is to take a story break. It’s a great excuse, too, for cuddling and I am more than well aware that that blessing is a short-lived one.
Children grow.
As an author, I admire Mrs. Osborne. She has penned an absolutely hypnotic series for young readers. Each book is 10 chapters, clipped, funny, exciting, well-paced and it’s positively wicked how she laces all this education into her prose.
Osborne’s first book in the series was “Dinosaurs Before Dark.” It’s a great formula. A brother and his younger sister discover a mysterious tree house in the woods near their home in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania. There, they meet a mysterious master librarian, Morgan LaFay, who lives in the time of King Arthur. Each episode, Morgan gives the children assignments to go back — and sometimes, forward — in time on missions.
Jack and Annie fit right in with Indy’s pirate heart. The kids have visited pyramids when they weren’t so ancient, gorillas in Africa, famous people, the Civil War, erupting volcanoes, the San Francisco Earthquake, the first Thanksgiving and a host — 36 so far — of other exotic locales.
Now, with Indy’s imagination, and a little story telling on both our parts, Jack and Annie have moved from Frog Creek to Sand Canyon and pretty much live with us. We set plates for them at dinner. We open doors to let them in and climb invisible rope ladders to join them in adventures.
Their creator is one of America’s most successful children’s writers and has lived a life almost as interesting as her charges.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 1970s, Ms. Osborne held all manner of odd jobs, from a window dresser in Carmel to a Russian travel agent in Washington D.C. She traveled across Asia in a rickety caravan, living in places one wouldn’t dream of visiting today: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal. She was nearly killed in a huge earthquake and again, in a Kabul riot. In Kathmandu, she developed blood poisoning and took a few years to recover.
When she returned to the states, she started writing. And how lucky we are to have her.
“Now twenty years and more than fifty books later, I feel I’m one of the most fortunate people on earth,” she noted in her autobiography. “I’ve been an elegant spider detective who plays jazz clarinet, and a small girl traveling on the back of a moonhorse. I’ve journeyed through Greek mythology, Norse mythology, medieval stories, and American tall tales. I’ve ‘met’ George Washington and Ben Franklin, and without even leaving my home I’ve traveled around the globe, learning about the religions of the world.”
She’s also saddled me with two extra albeit invisible mouths to feed.
Indy and I call up to the roof for Jack and Annie to climb out of their abode.
“Dinner’s on the table and it’s getting cold!” my daughter scolds in friendly invitation.
The four of us head back in. There are candles on the dinner table and four more spoonfuls of asparagus waiting for my girl. My father, who is 84 and hard of hearing, has no idea what we’re all talking about. I interject questions about the NFL.
The table balances itself out.
All Jack and Annie have to do is find a picture of where they want to be and the tree house will spin and take them there. Would real travel be so easy.
Indy is a pretty sharp cookie.
There is always a passage about how after all the spinning, the tree house becomes still.
Absolutely still.
Sometimes, I’ll slyly edit and say: “And then, it was semi-tepid and passably calm.”
My daughter will smile and shake her head. “Noooooo, Daddy,” she’ll whisper. “And then, it was quiet. Absolutely quiet…”
John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net