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Health & Fitness

The Tree Of Love

My crepe myrtle (sometimes called crape myrtle which is not such a nice name) always bloomed its lovely pink flowers on August 3rd. It was as if the plant knew the calendar day and voila, there were the lovely blooms. I have noticed in my neighborhood that everyone’s crepe had bloomed early and mine is a bit behind. That was fine, it did not bloom this year, only had about 6  flowers in its 6 foot or taller tree  It just does not want to do what everyone else’s tree or planting does. It does its own thing. A very modern attitude for a tree.

It was given to me as a tiny plant, a cutting from a larger one that bloomed on the grounds of the apartment building; we lived in from my age of fourteen until I married at age twenty-six. The building was owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Tobesman and was located at 3000 West Coldspring Lane in Baltimore, Maryland. We lived on the second floor and Mr. and Mrs. T. occupied the first floor. Originally, it was owned by a ballet teacher who had a ballet school on the first floor. When we knew we were going to move there, we knew it had been sold to Mr. and Mrs. T. who lived there with their two daughters.

When I married, Mr. T. was a contractor and we hired him to build us a large family room downstairs in our basement. He built a marvelous room for us 30 feet long and used paneling to cover the walls which were the ‘in’ thing to do. Thirty-five years later, because it was outdated using paneling, we had it painted with three coats of cream colored paint to be more modern.

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He brought the cutting from his crepe tree one day in the late fall, a day like today which is the first day of the end of Daylight Savings Time while he was building our family room, now called great rooms in the new homes being built currently. It was a new home present and it was sweet of him. My husband and I decided to plant it on the side of the house which was our first new home and then after one year, we replanted it to the back of the house alongside of a patio, we had built back there. It grew through the years and now it must be eight feet tall and we usually trim it a bit before the winter season.

It is a nice reminder of a very fine man. He was not educated in the full sense of what we are now; he had been very poor growing up and  he went to work early in his life. I believe his parents died young and he had to take care of himself. He was very bright with numbers, measurements and wonderful design ideas. He drew up a plan for the room and it really is a tribute to his knowledge, on how delightful the space turned out.

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He would come every morning five days a week and he worked for in those days for twenty dollars a day plus supplies. It was in 1965 and I was pregnant with my son and I had just lost my father. He of course knew my mom and dad because we lived above his floor in his building. When he was doing his work, I would walk the steps and give him a drink and a snack and we would chat. He may not have had formal education; but he knew a lot and he had good opinions on everything. I learned to know him very well when he was building this room. In the many weeks, he was here; I realized what a dear man he was. He was always concerned for my walking down the steps and being pregnant and towards the end of April and beginning of May; he would tell me not to come down. He feared for me falling or tripping over the materials he was using. He would talk to me like he was my father, now that mine was gone.

Then I would stand at the top of the steps and when he had a time out for a few minutes, he and I would converse about his kids and grandkids and his wife.

Mom moved out from the building and after he finished the remodeling and I had my son, I invited him and his wife Florence to my son’s baby naming event. He was Ben and we always called him Mr.T. By then the crepe myrtle had been transplanted and it was growing very fast. It had not blossomed then, because it was only the end of May and the blooms did not arrive until August. He came back in August to adjust something down in the family room and he admired how large his planting had become.

There is a saying “May the flowers of love never be nipped by the frost of disappointment, nor shadow of grief fall among your family and friends.”

He was wonderful person who always had a smile on his face. I believe when he was a younger man, he had been quite handsome and debonair. The years of hard work and Asthma aged him, but his personality was like my crepe myrtle. He stood tall, the blooms of his mind blossomed often and the clipping he gave us as a present for our new home remains tall. Every time I look at it, especially this time of year,  I see him bringing it to us in late November 1964.

I was so happy to have our first planting then and though we have had through the years many plants, trees and flowers in our back and front areas; this one has survived some bad winters, some hot months and always is beautiful in August.

He is remembered by us as a dear man, who built a lovely family room which I can now call a Great Room, because the man who undertook the work had a great vision for its design. He was not an interior decorator, a furniture salesman, an architect, a room designer, a college graduate. He was a plain man who loved to create and knew his mathematics and measurements and he also knew the quality of the materials, he used to create rooms like mine.

Every time, we go downstairs to this great room, I am reminded of the dear man who brought it to life.

The crepe myrtle in the back and the room downstairs are a testament to him and as long as we are here in this home, his flower of love to a young woman and her husband, who he knew from age fourteen to age twenty –six will never be nipped by the frost of disappointment or hopefully never have terrible grief fall among us. The crepe myrtle will protect us in flowering and non-flowering times and we will take care of it for the rest of our lives.

We have his smiling face and determination to give us something beautiful, meaningful and worthwhile in our garden and in our domicile. Oliver Wendell Holmes said “home is where we love.”  This is so true.

We love our home and will always treasure how Mr. Ben T. helped to make it happen. The Great Room was built and created by a great man.The crepe myrtle is also a symbol of his knowing in advance that this small planting would evolve into a great tree.

He himself was a dear man, plain, not deriving happiness only out of material things; he had joy in creating in his work, his trees and his neighbors. He was as his initial implied T-- traditional, tops and terrific.

Today I was watching an old The Waltons TV show. In it John-Boy and his Mom Liv bought what they thought would be a fantastic purchase. A crooked salesman sold them a 50 set of books and they were to pay for it monthly as it was delivered. They gave the grand sum of three dollars for the first book and he did not submit the money to the publisher and he had no intention of them ever receiving the books. It all got resolved in the end but the look on John-Boy's face and his Mom when they got the first book was shining through the TV set right to me.

To us now one book, one tree small plant and many other things seems so trivial and unworthy of our adoration. We have so much now with all the inventions that have been bestowed upon us since in the story time of The Great Depression and since my time fifty-three years ago receiving a tiny plant that it seems now to feel silly to have been made happy by small things back then.

I still get the glow of the feeling my husband and I had that day, similar to today November 3rd way into Fall and it was on a Sunday too when Mr. T. brought me this gift. I pull up the blinds and open the drapes and everyday I love my Crepe Myrtle through the window which has grown along with me and my family. It is my tree of love and existence.

 

This post is contributed by a community member. The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Patch Media Corporation. Everyone is welcome to submit a post to Patch. If you'd like to post a blog, go here to get started.

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This post is contributed by a community member. The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Patch Media Corporation. Everyone is welcome to submit a post to Patch. If you'd like to post a blog, go here to get started.

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