Love is……BIG TREES???

I have experienced many “mile stones” in my life……..Jerry and I are coming up to our 15th wedding anniversary on June 14th.  Jerry has just celebrated his 69th birthday……I will be turning 52 in August…….There is one “mile stone” that I have tried to forget.  No matter how hard I’ve tried, I  just can’t seem to part with it yet……….It  is the day Jerry cut down a 40 ft tree……..

……And all HELL broke loose.

Let me first start by saying that I absolutely ADORE my husband…..There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me.  All I  have to do is make a comment and Jerry is right there making sure it happens for me.  My wish has always been Jerry’s command.  Jerry is my number one fan……..Let’s face it……… I have been spoiled.

However…..

It has bit me in the butt from time to time…..

One of the first times I felt the “bite” was our first Christmas  in our little house in West Ogden.  I was decorating.  I looked at the living room wall and said,

“I wish I could find a way to hang my giant Christmas stocking up on that wall…….”

……No sooner said than done…..

Dammit.

I came home from work the next day to find the giant Christmas stocking hung smartly in the center of the living room wall.

“WOW,” I exclaimed, “How’d you get that to stay up there?”

With great pride in ingenuity, Jerry took the stocking down so I could see…….

……He had super glued a gigantic suction cup with a hook on it to my living room wall…….

That same Christmas,  I said,

“I wonder how that living room wall would look if we had all different kinds of  sizes  of Christmas stockings pinned up  on that wall with the Big Christmas Stocking centered in the middle………..”

Well…..

I came home from work the next day and Jerry had every size of Christmas stocking on the wall……

…..tacked up with ten-penny nails…..

You should see the holes that were left……..

Year…..after year…..after year……

…The “tradition” continues…

I came home another time to find that Jerry had drilled holes in the dowels on the back of my rocking chair and strung the cushion with wire and tied it up through the holes because the cushion wasn’t hitting the middle of his back properly…….

Clever.

It got to the point that when I would come home from work and hear Jerry say,

“Come see what I’ve done…….”

My belly button would pucker and I would think to myself,

“Oh, shit……”

But…..this time, this particular time, it was a gigantic catastrophe………

You must understand, these little “tokens of affection” are usually my fault……

…..I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut.

My brain knows when to shut up…….My brain screams every time I go to open my mouth……..

“NOOOO!!!”

…..But my mouth always replies a little smugly,

“TOOOO LATE!”

It was mid-April of last year, 2011, when Ogden was hit with a horrible wind storm;  uprooting trees and tearing shingles off of houses.  It was pretty scary.  Just over the fence from our back yard, were several huge Chinese Elm trees…….

TRASH TREES……

I absolutely loathe Chinese Elm trees.   They sprout all over the place, they” rain” leaves all over everywhere, they have little annoying bugs and these trees, in particular, were half dead.

Me, being the concerned female homeowner that I am, I voiced my concern……

“DON’T DO IT,”  my brain warned, “DON’T SAY ANYTHING……”

…..”TOOOOOO LATE,”  my mouth replied……

“I’m so worried about those trees………they’re half dead and I’m afraid if we get another wind storm like the last one we’re going to find big, dead trees in our back yard and a broken fence, and electricity lines down, and all kinds of stuff that I really don’t want to deal with.”

“YOU IDIOT!”

My brain isn’t very nice when I don’t listen to it……

…….But that’s when the trouble began……

Jerry decided he needed to cut the trees down.

I told him that wasn’t a very good idea……

…..Which just added fuel to his ever-smoldering fire…..

Day after day he studied the back fence; looking over those damn Chinese Elm trees….

…..And making a plan…

“Oh, good night, I gotta talk him outta this…..” I thought to myself…

I didn’t know what I was going to say or HOW I was going to stop him……

Finally, I thought if I conceded; with some conditions, it would soften the bargain and Jerry wouldn’t do anything fool-hardy unless someone were here to stop him……

“At least wait until  the boys can come help you so you’re not out there by yourself……..”

He didn’t say anything…..

……But he did nod his head….

I took that as a decision that he was going to  wait for the boys…….

Boy, was I relieved….

……Damn, was I WRONG!

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon.  I was puttering around my living room doing some dusting when I heard the most gut-wrenching screech……

…….Like a  train putting on its breaks.

The house gave a shudder…..and the power lines quivered……

“Oh, this is NOT good,” I thought to myself.

My heart in my gut, I ran out to my back yard……

Jerry wasn’t in sight…..

I called….

“JERRY!”

My heart was pounding so hard in my ears as I frantically looked around the back yard….

There was a faint “Help me…”  coming from the other side of the fence.  As I got close to the very  back end of your yard, I could see the back of Jerry’s head above the top of the fence; his ball cap a little askew.  I saw all the neighborhood men running toward where Jerry was standing. One of our neighbors looked at me with a stern look and said,

“DON’T COME BACK HERE, KELLY…….”

Oh, THAT was a good thing to tell me…….

My mind began to wander…

Hmmmmmm………Jerry……….40 ft half-dead Chinese Elm……..

Hmmmm………..chainsaw…………….amputation…………..disembowlment, maybe…………….better still………IMPAILMENT……

Oh, my mind just raced with the possibilities…….

While the men were seeing to my most worthy husband, I ran back to the house, called 911 and then called my best friend, Vickie to ask her to ride with me to the hospital.  I was calm.   I was detailed.  I was a rock……….

…….Then, I went outside……

As I neared the back fence, I could see people trying to get Jerry back into the yard…..Our neighbor saw me and said,

“He’s not bleeding, Kelly, but we think it’s his leg…….”

“You don’t have him free yet?”

“No…..he’s still pinned with the tree, but he’s not bleeding…..”

“He’s NOT bleeding??”

“No, he’s not bleeding…….but we think he broke his leg….”

“But he’s NOT bleeding and he’s NOT going to die…..”

“No, he’s NOT going to die….”

A flood of emotion began erupting from the soles of my feet and started to capitulate upward…….

…...”He’s gonna be alright…..He’s NOT bleeding…….He’s NOT going to die………”

I went over to the back fence…..

….”He’s gonna be alright….”

I climbed up to look over to see my husband’s face…….

“He’s NOT bleeding”…….

The men were still moving debris off of Jerry while he groaned in pain…..

“He’s NOT gonna die…..”

The emotion finally reached the center of my heart, and I was overcome………..

…..I looked down tenderly on Jerry’s face; his miserable,  distorted, stubborn face……. his body writhing in pain, looking up at me……

It was kinda like an out-of-body experience…….like I was looking at some epic movie taking place in my back yard…..Some major “play on the silver screen”…..with a Leonard Bernstein musical score in the back ground……The music builds………I’m looking down at Jerry…….He’s looking up at me………Finally, the “heroin” speaks…..

“YOU  SONOFABITCH!!!!”

…….Well….

It certainly wasn’t the MGM version of a romantic epic directed by Cecil B. DeMille……..

…..But it was honest..

….and raw….

In truth, I wanted to kill him…..

He was supposed to wait for some help, but he got stubborn…..

He took two “come-a-long’s” and tied them around the trunk of the tree. Then, he started cutting……..

Then, he’s stop and crank one “come-a-long”……

Then, he’d cut some more….

Then, he’d stop and crank the OTHER “come-a-long”…..

Then he cut some more…….

By the time the tree was ready to fall, he had constructed a very powerful “beanie flipper”……

Wyle E. Coyote would have been proud……it was better than ANY ACME product on the Warner Brother’s set!

When the tree did finally fall, it also hit a guideline to a power pole in our back yard and the tree ricocheted straight back, pinning  Jerry to our back fence…….

…..By his ankles….

…I wanted to string him up by them…

…If he hadn’t broke the right one, I would have succeeded..

Well, the paramedics came, my friend, Vickie came and we went to the ER……

The doctor was a kid…….I swear, they get younger every time I go into the hospital…..He looked like Doogie Houser……….He asked me what had happened…..

I proceeded to make an accounting of all the events that happened……but I did leave out the “sonofabitch” part…..

After I had completed regaling him about what happened with all the flair that a woman scorned could muster, that kid doctor looked at me and said scoffing,

“Now, I bet if he had cut that tree down without breaking his ankle you would have thought he was SOOOOO clever and you would have  been SOOOOOOO proud of him……”

I looked at that young upstart with daggers…..

“He didn’t do anything that any man would have done…..”

I couldn’t believe my ears …..Ol’ “Doogie” continued…..

“In fact, I probably would have done the same thing….”

“YOU LITTLE SMART ASS!…..” My brain screamed…..

Before I could smack the little “darling”, Dr Doogie Smart Ass walked away and Jerry went down to surgery……

…….And with it went the opportunity to explain to the ER staff how my size 9 Nike got stuck in Dr. Smart Mouth’s backside……

Well,……a year, a month and four days later……..

We survived…

Jerry had to have surgery and have a plate, some pins and a couple of screws put in his leg.  Our neighbor had all but one big Chinese Elm cut down.  Jerry can walk, but his leg gives him fits in the winter time.  I remind him every chance I get about what a knot-headed thing he did………

…..He’s still trying to figure out a way to cut down that last tree….

….I remind him how close I came to killing him….

He reminds me every day that I only cut down the stupid tree because he loves me…….

Oh…..BROTHER!!

But….then I thought about it….

That’s what love is all about….in Jerry’s Universe………the little adventures we experience when we’re together…….trying to do the little things for one another and the incredible crazy consequences of our actions…….It’s complicated…….with all the “ups” and “downs”; “side ways” and” back-assward ways” and “skeeeeewompus ways” that life and love can turn two people who are willing to survive the ride……

You’re all  probably wondering why “Love is……Tall Trees?”

….Actually, It’s really not….

Love…… true love, is your husband forgiving you and still loving you……even after you called him a “sonofabitch” for falling a 40 foot tree on himself and breaking up his ankle…….

……Just a few seconds ago, Jerry came in while I was “penning” this adventure……

…He was silent while reading over my shoulder.  Then, he walked over to the bedroom door to go back outside……

….”Never gonna let me live this down, are ya……”

He went out the back door and called for Charlie.