MY MOSTLY HAPPY LIFE: Autobiography of a Climbing Tree

Chapter 11 - The Lily Pond

Esther's mother came up with the idea.

You already know that Donna is a sculptress, and that she created all of the plaques in the Children's Garden; you also know that each plaque quotes lines from a different poem.

There is more, though, that I haven't told you.

Under each quotation, Donna had also sculpted in a bas-relief style a small picture that illustrates lines from the poem. Bas-relief means that an images sticks out a little from the background, but is not three-dimensional.

Donna's garden artwork is just about what you would expect.

For Kipling's The Camel's Hump, it is a funny looking knock-kneed camel. For Stevenson's My Shadow, it is a befuddled boy trying to stomp on his shadow. For Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, it is daffodils dancing in the sun.

And so on.

But Donna's idea - her solution to Meg's problem - was more complicated than merely to add another plaque.

I'll tell you how it came to be.

By mid-afternoon on Esther's birthday, Donna became concerned because her daughter and father had not returned home. So she walked across the street into the park and went looking for them. She found them sitting on a bench beside the lily pond in the Children's Garden, conversing with a freckle-faced, red-haired girl that she did not yet know was named Meg.

At Donna's insistence, Esther and Sam recapitulated everything they had done since they arrived at the park, starting with their first sighting of Meg and ending with Jarvis Larchmont fleeing in fear of what Alonso Hannah would do to him. Their narrative included vivid descriptions of Meg's attempt to dig a hole in the flowerbed under the plaque for Ethan's Best Friend; Jarvis kicking Meg's trowel; Jarvis trying to break into Meg's Moroccan magic box; Sam rescuing Meg; the threat of Alonso's fictional security system; and Meg telling Sam and Esther why she wanted to bury Princess under Pal's plaque.

Donna later said that the instant her father recounted this last detail, it was as if a muse had attached a design to the tip of an arrow and shot it directly into her head.

That was how quickly she got the idea for the memorial. Nor did she ever change a single detail of the sculpture as the project progressed.

Donna drew a sketch for her father.

He liked it.

She showed the sketch to her daughter.

Esther loved it.

Sam brought Donna's design to the attention of the trustees of the Samuel Swerling Park, which means that he discussed it with himself, and the trustees approved the expenditure.

Then and only then did he, Donna, and Esther show the drawing to Meg.

"I won't bore you with all the details of how to cast metal," Donna explained to the still grieving child. "Briefly, though, what I'm going to do is create a life-sized clay model of what you see here." She tapped the drawing with her forefinger. "Then, using a process involving latex rubber and plaster, I'll make a mold of the clay model. The result will be a cast. If you think of the kind of cast that a person wears on a broken arm, you'll get the picture. In the same way that the cast takes on the shape of an arm, the cast of my clay model will replicate every curve, crevice, and contour of my design. After the plaster cast has hardened, I will remove it from the clay model. Then I'll coat the inside of the cast with a thick layer of melted wax. Once the wax has cooled, I'll remove the cast; that will leave me with a wax model identical to the original model I had made of clay."