Banyan

When I was smaller than just about everything, I reached up for the cup on the TV. Grabbing me, my hand, the cup and (quite loudly) my attention, my mother averted a scalding and a scarring more vivid than this memory. I was astonished, as I dangled in her trembling arms, to see the cup brimmed with black coffee when just yesterday, hadn't I picked raisins out of the same cup, set on the table my Grandpa made?

'Be careful' is the prayer good parents speak to childrens' dreams and dangers. Strapping gas masks on his children as scud alarms blared, my Israeli friend said, 'the worst fear a parent can feel is not being able to protect your children.' We build our fences tall and strong around the innocent.

To err is human; even air can suffocate the child. Howard Hughes' mother warned him the typhus would take him if he strayed into the village. The only latitude she left him was up -- his safest love, the sky. He who feared the ordinary door knob engineered commercial planes for earthbound citizens, that parents might tremble anew.

What does it take for a person, or a people, to be free? There is a banyan tree on a virgin island. Its branches dangle earthward, taking root. This tree with a thousand trunks will never leave its real estate. It is worthy of a picture and a picnic in its shade. At dusk, the sun adorns it with a silver tiara. Protected by the government, it shall never be a mast or a guitar or plough or a girl's small table, holding raisins.