The Sandwich Tree
When she was 5 years old Mede had a very definite culinary taste that didn’t run to sandwiches in any way shape or form (mostly crustless and cut on the diagonal). She liked the julienne carrot or celery sticks, the fruit and the yoghurt and loved the small LCM (made of rice bubbles and marshmallow). She just didn’t like the sandwich.
A sandwich with highly imaginative fillings designed to peak even the fussiest child’s apetite. But not Mede’s! Still, she dutifully took them off to school and dutifully produced her lunch box at the end of the day, empty except for the LCM wrapper. She was, I determined a model child and school was going to be a breeze. Joy!
I remember gardening one day and noticing a piece of plastic protruding out from the bottom of a flowering bush. It had been windy over the previous two days that I thought the plastic had simply been picked up and man-handled by a rouge wind across from the Golf Club car park.
It turned out I was so far off the beaten track with that interpretation of events that you could have heard a pin drop when the real story dawned on me! When you look up and under a flowering bush, it’s actually very orderly under there. This particular bush had a ‘standard’ beginning so it was uniformly round and regular on the outside and had a strong network of branches underneath.
Imagine my surprise when looking under its skirt I found not just one plastic bag but close to twenty-seven of them. One for every day for four weeks out of a month. Each of them with sandwiches in them! So with the equal diligence of the one that put them there I took them out.
Imagine the surprise of herself when she arrived in the kitchen that afternoon and each little decaying package was neatly stacked on the kitchen bench. I didn’t say a word. Conscience is such a cleansing tool.
At precisely 5.35pm Mede’s confession was made. There was no external pressure to explain, just the evidence. Evidence that was hard to refute. So between heaving sobs of contrition the confession came out slowly about how so and so friend thought that sandwiches was so yesterday! And Mede didn’t wanted to be yesterday’s anything. She wanted to be today and tomorrow. To be cool!
This explanation was both understandable and plausible and totally forgiveable. I never found sandwiches in the Sandwich Tree after that but then it also occurred to me to look under all the other trees in the garden just in case! I did and there weren’t. Infact today, she even eats her crusts. Crumbs, that’s a huge improvement!
