Flipped (4)

My dad enjoyed painting in his spare time. He always painted in the yard since the garage was filled with things other family members said they will use but never used. The beautiful scenery was outside of our house but nowhere near our house. Therefore, my dad often took a photoshoot and painted the picture.

When he was painting, he always put me beside him. If I kept silent for three minutes, he would talk to me about himself. In this way, I knew a lot about him. The older I became, the more philosophical his words were. Once he asked me why I was so crazy about Bryce. I told him how cute he was and told him about Bryce’s blush cheek. A moment later, dad told me that the whole picture is not the sum of the parts.

I didn’t understand what the sentence meant until I climbed up to the big tree. The first time I climbed the tree was to catch a kite. I noticed a kite fell down somewhere near the big tree. I and my dog went to find it. When we arrived there, my dog barked up at the big tree. I found that the kite caught in the tree. I decided to recuse it.

While I was climbing the tree, Bryce walked around the tree and from the way he looked at the kite I knew it was his. But it was still out of reach. When I looked down the tree, I felt dizzy. I tried to keep calm and focus on the kite. When I caught the kite, its string tangled with the stick. Somehow I managed to get the kite free. When I caught the kite, my feeling of fear gave way to the appreciation of the beauty. At that moment, I understood what my dad said that the whole picture was more than the sum of the parts.

Since then, I climbed up to the tree every day. At first, I wanted to know how far I could climb before the school bus pulled up. Later, I got up early and had breakfast early. So I have much time to enjoy the beauty. I wanted to share this great view with someone. It couldn’t be my mom because being a reasonable adult, she would surely stop me. My brothers didn’t care about it. So it was only my dad left. I invited to him to climb the tree. He agreed. I was so excited that I almost didn’t fall asleep that night.

The next morning, I arrived at the top of the tree early, thinking the lists I will introduce to dad when I heard noises under the trees. From the tools that they took out out of the truck, I knew they were going to cut the tree. They shouted at me and asked me to climb down. I refused and called on others friends I under the tree to climb up so that they won’t cut down the tree. At that moment, the school bus pulled in. They boarded the bus and left.

The memory of what happened later blurred. What I only remembered was that my mom came, crying and asking me to come down. Later, dad came. With the help of firefighters, he climbed the tree and asked me to go down with him, saying he only cared about my safety.

Several days after the event, I didn’t go to school.