Bridges

A seasonal flower market is the best way I can describe it, but I
think we usually just call it the bridge. Most of the year the
flower girl, a young woman, grandmother, or child - sometimes all of
them together - stand or snooze watch over a fabulous array of
beautiful plant life along a small bridge just a block from our house.
In the springtime bursts of color are the draw. The first driver
who double parks on the bridge with a hint of interest stirs the
entrepreneurs to life. Amid the plants on the bridge, we
also visit the bike guy, who with twisted hands and a green bottle
of bai jiu within reach, fixes flat tires or squeaky brakes without
uttering a single word of conversation. I just pay him 10 kuai when
he is done. The pancake lady sells jian bing for 4 kuai. After
first trying this street food - a rolled pastry with egg, sesame seed,
cilantro and green onion - I hurried home to share the last bite with
Joanne; she coined the old woman's name. "That pancake thingy was
amazing, are you gonna learn how to make it before we move back?"

It is really cold now, and of late the bridge has made room for the
glove and hat lady and the firewood guy too. Among them the tree lady
stands a frigid watch over rows of live Christmas trees
lining both sides of the bridge.

"Dad, can we get our Christmas tree this weekend?" Parker asked.

"What do you mean, we already have one."

"Da'ad!"

I joked that although our live tree from last year isn't so "live"
anymore, we could paint it's twiggy branches green and pull it back
into the house. The boys laughed.

"Maybe they can deliver the new one and take the old one away," Parker
suggested.

"Right, and maybe this year, we can to do a better job of keeping it alive."

"Dad, do you think we can plant it in the yard?"

"Good idea sonny, did you know --"

" -- yeah, I know," he cut in, "Meemaw and PopPop planted the
Christmas trees from when you were little in your yard."

"Yep, and they're still there in the back yard, the home run fence for
our wiffle ball games, remember?"

"Those huge ones," Bennett called out, "how did they fit --"

"--C'mon B," I poked, raising giggles from all three of them.
"They've got to be 30 years old. They used to be regular Christmas
trees just like these; they grew that tall after PopPop planted them."

"Can we get that one dad?" Devon shouted, pointing at the tallest of
the potted evergreens as we crossed the bridge.

I rolled down the window, "Ni hao, nai nai. Na ge gao de shu, duo shao qian."

"Zhe ge yi qian wu bai."

"Zhenda ma?" I squawked, offering her my Chingish version of
'seriously?' as I I rolled up the window and drove along.

"What'd she say, dad?"

"1500 kuai! Dude, that is like two-hundred bucks! Maybe we should
think about the green paint."
___________

Last night, after the boys were in bed, I got a call from Meemaw on
Skype. We chatted about winter travel plans, the boys' grades, the
status of various Amazon orders, the temperatures in each of our parts
of the world, trees.

A neighbor's tree had fallen during Hurricane Sandy and a large crane
was on site to help with removal. Mom turned the webcam to the
backyard and I saw the amazing sight; dad had negotiated with the
crane guy to go ahead and take our trees out too. Hanging high over
our back yard, our family Chirstmas tree, over 30 years old - our
home run fence, hiding spot, summer shade - swung in the air. Gone.
____________

This weekend, I think we'll go back to the bridge and get that tree
from the tree lady. And sometime in January we will dig a hole and
plant it in the ground out in the front of our house in River Garden.
Though chances are we will never see this tree grow tall, become a
homerun fence or provide shade to a worker in the heat of the Beijing
summer, I am pretty sure that when we plant that tree in the ground,
my boys, just like their daddy, will never forget it.