The apple and the tree
We're more alike than we think.
She’s digging furiously at the ground. Her nails are collecting dirt, one by one; her feet are already filthy from rooting around in the mud next to the creek a few minutes ago.
She is absolutely sure that we have found the perfect rock to dislodge from the hard ground. It’s big enough to give her the satisfaction of a completed task, but not so big that the job is impossible.
To me, it seems impossible. Or at least futile.
This rock has likely been stuck in this exact place for countless years. Hundreds? Thousands? Sediment was washed away around it and on top of it, but the net effect is a tighter bond. Other smaller rocks are pressed against this larger rock. The dirt can be moved, but the pace is slow in the beginning and gets even worse the more she digs.
She is undaunted. She will not give up. She has done this before.
Why is this so important to her? I can only speculate and try to make sense of it within a grand, existential concept.
It’s a proxy for cheating death, for making impermanent something that seems permanent.
That almost certainly isn’t it, or at least isn’t how a 7-year-old would describe it even if it there were elements of truth to it.
I look at her, scraping away at the ground, and I wonder:
Why is she like this?
Then I go and find a sharp rock, a tool for the job.
Now I’m digging, too.
“Ooh, yeah. That’s what we need. Can you get me a rock like that?” she asks.
I tell her I will do even better than that. I will get her a sturdy stick, part of a thick branch from a nearby tree. Now I’m scaling a brick retaining wall to find the thing I’ve promised.
“Don’t go too far away,” she says. “Make sure I can see you.”
I return with a couple different options. I give her a stick while I keep going to work with the rock — trying to move enough dirt to get leverage, or at least see if we can get leverage, to remove this larger rock from the dirt. I don’t even know how big it is because we can’t see the bottom nor all the sides.
I mention to her that we have no idea how big this rock is. I gently broach the idea that we might not be able to get it out. (I’m about 99% sure we won’t, but might is a good start).
She keeps digging with the stick. An inch of it snaps off, having been wedged under the rock and pressed upward while not being nearly strong enough to move it. She tosses the broken part to the side and keeps working.
I look at my phone. My older daughter has called me four times from her watch, and now a fresh text comes in. “Where are you?” She and my wife are far up the steps at a craft market selling jewelry they made. Our youngest, the 4-year-old, is with them and waiting for me to come back.
He and I had already made the trek down, just the two of us, and done many of these same things in the dirt before he and his sister traded places for some one-on-one time.
In a house with three kids, they all crave the moments when they have the undivided attention of at least one parent.
I’m trying to stay in the moment and give that time to our 7-year-old, the middle child who got neither the almost three years of undivided attention her sister had as the first born nor gets the extra doting reserved for the baby of the family.
But I’m also mindful of the time and the delicate needs of the group. Our 10-year-old is getting stressed out because she has to manage the 4-year-old while my wife tends to customers. The 4-year-old is probably getting bored and jealous. Everyone is probably getting hungry and there’s a good chance someone has to pee but can’t as long as we’re down here trying to dislodge a rock from the ground.
“We need to get back soon,” I tell the 7-year-old.
“We’re not going back until we get the rock out,” she replies.
I stare off into the distance for about 30 seconds.
“Here, you take this rock,” I say, handing her the implement I’ve been working with. “Let me try the stick.”
I can easily see the ways in which one, two or all three of our kids are like my wife: Their appearance, their particular type of intelligence, their artistic ability, their spatial awareness.
This is proven when they giggle and ask me to draw someone playing soccer, then gleefully point out that it looks like an oddly shaped man kicking a pizza. All three of them can already draw or paint better than I can, and at least the 10-year-old is already better at eyeballing something that has been taken apart and seeing how it fits together. (“Dad, just hand it to me.”)
They are like me, too, and I’m attuned to the more obvious ways. Our oldest child is a relentless organizer of plans and a connector within her friend groups. Our 4-year-old looks like me, especially how I looked at his age. He has always had more and larger words than his years would suggest.
The 7-year-old has no concept of time, which is exactly the opposite of how I have always been. As a young child, I would run from room to room to see if all the clocks were the same. She gets locked in on a project and just doesn’t want to quit. She is both self-possessed and stubborn, qualities that are both amazing and at times frustrating, like when she insists on digging out a rock.
Now I’m working with the stick, trying to pry up different edges of the rock to see where it might be vulnerable.
This is no longer a casual effort. It’s a hot night, and I’m sweating. She notices that I’m sweating, and she notices that I’m not stopping what I’m doing.
I’m thinking now about all the projects I’ve refused to give up, the tasks I’ve insisted could be completed even when it seemed somewhere between irresponsible and impossible.
Am I stubborn? Did she get this from me?
Our birthdays are close together, enough so that we are both Scorpios. “Dad, when I’m 10 you are going to be 50,” she has playfully taunted for a couple years now, showing off her ability to humble me with math.
It seems far off and yet also getting close.
She’s 7, almost 8. I’m 47, almost 48. The difference in our ages means that my stubbornness has to give way at times to rationality while hers still does not.
“If we don’t get this rock out in the next two minutes, we are going to have to leave and go back up,” I announce to her. “Your brother is looking for us. Your sister is worried. Mama needs to pee. And this rock isn’t budging.”
She doesn’t look up, just keeps digging. “We can do it,” she says. “I’m sure of it.”
I’ve already broken one stick into about seven pieces. I grab the other one and try a different spot that she has cleared with the rock. I wedge it in and lift it up, and it seems to me that the rock moves a little.
I can’t tell if it’s a dehydrated and sweaty hallucination or if it’s real. I go back to the same spot, and it definitely moves.
She sees it and immediately digs her hands into the spot. Pulling with all her might, the rock moves a little more, then a lot, and then it comes unbolted from its suddenly impermanent resting place.
She is holding the rock and squealing and yelling and laughing and shouting that she knew we could do it. People are looking at us, but they are smiling because it’s impossible not to smile at her.
I am living inside another lesson that she is never to be underestimated, that the synthesis of her confidence and her will creates a power that will make you sorry you doubted it.
The rock is roughly four inches wide, six inches long and two inches deep. I wonder where it has been, but I know where it is going: to our house, in a drawer in her room.
We can now walk back to meet the rest of the family. She shows off the rock, and her little brother is extremely jealous but also happy to see us. Her older sister scolds me for not answering her calls, but I tell her about the rock and she can picture exactly how it all played out.
I volunteer to stand in a seemingly never-ending line for food, and it tastes twice as good because of the wait. The kids spot some old friends. Everyone gets fed and has a chance to pee.
As I think back on the details a couple weeks later and begin writing them down — tapping away on the keyboard, oblivious to time or the world around me — I decide on the title, “The apple and the tree.”
Very shortly thereafter, as if somehow sensing it, our 7-year-old walks up to me and hands me two apple seeds and tells me that she wants to plant them in the back yard so that we can have an apple tree.
She goes out by herself and I keep typing, but she comes back in a couple minutes later and asks for help because she saw a bee and got scared.
I don’t really want to stop what I’m doing to plant two seeds, but I dutifully walk out with her and tell her that we need to find a good spot with some soft ground. I lead her over to a part of the yard still muddy from that morning’s rain.
We press the seeds into the ground, hands getting dirty, and cover them up the best we can. She is sure that an apple tree is going to grow there; I’m quite a bit more skeptical, but I don’t tell her that.
We walk back into the house, we both wash our hands, and I sit back down at my computer.
It turns out this wasn’t an interruption, but instead the perfect way to end the story.
Tree here! I’d say she’s determined, not simply stubborn (to give more depth to your 30-second stare).