(Father help me. I want to live!)
Wani wachiyelo. Ate omakiyayo.
(Father help me. I want to live!)
Wani wachiyelo. Ate omakiyayo.
(Father help me. I want to live!)
Atay nimichikun?
(Father, have you done this?"
Oshiya chichiyelo.
(Humbly have pity on me.)

And then there was the time I heard laughter at the bottom of my tree. It was my father-in-law, the late and great founder and chief of the New Seminole, Busimanolotome Osceola. He was laughing real hard. If you read my books, you know him and I didn't see eye-to-eye on just about everything. Until I helped him shoot down a drone over the Everglades with a Stinger missile from a small Micco airplane, he never really accepted me as a member of the tribe. And let me tell you, he did everything he could to break me. But when I didn't break and saw I would stand my ground in a fight, he loved me like I was his own daughter. So now when I meditate in the Embassy, I see three faces up in my "tree:" Nokosee, Hallie, and my Micco.
Try it. See if you don't come down from your "tree" with a big fat silly smile on your face.
9/24 Update: Just finished a new book up in my tree. On Heights & Hunger by Josh Maclvor-Andersen. I highly recommend it to anyone like me wrestling with the big questions in or out of a tree. The author is at once an arborist, a competitive tree climber (who knew), and a professor of writing, journalism, literature, and mythology at Northern Michigan University. I was initially drawn to it because it was written by a guy who knows trees, like me, and likes them too, like me. Then I was drawn to his prose and the power he wields over words as he tells his story about growing up in a Christian commune called Love Inn (gotta love that), falling away from it following his parents' divorce and then joining up with his older brother to scale trees, skydive, and lead lives of adventure. All the while trying to make sense out of life, faith, and family. Very much like my story but with far less bloodletting. And sex. But with more of a self-deprecating sense of humor.
