Pinky Story # 4 One for Tree, Tree for All

Watch out for that tree! (George of the Jungle)

Believe it or not, the rambutan tree in front of Pinky house had the best rambutan fruit ever! It was really delicious so it dragged people to steal and even rob it. Uh huh.
The thick and juicy flesh... sweet yet firm, you would never get enough. The amazing thing was even though it was still greenish yellow, it was already edible and sweet.
Did the ghost has something to do with it? (remember the "old man" who lived there I told you in #2?). Of course not. It's purely the gene, I think.
It was the only tree in Pinky house (there was papaya in the open space inside the house, but it's not really a tree, right?). It was pretty big, gave us the shade and lots lots of yield.

But, it also gave us trouble.

With the size of the tree, it certainly had big canopy, meaning it has abundant leaves. The leaves of course didn't stick forever on the branch. They fell. All over. When the day was windy, they travelled far away to the neighbor's land, to the street, to places that give people that look. Hmm... Some neighbors were mad at me because of that. We actually had a sweeping yard schedule, but it seemed that it wasn't an interesting activity (right!). So, sometimes some people missed their turns. I was one of them, occasionally. But it was better than didn't sweep or care at all, right? (excuse..hehehe). The point was, the neighbors complained and grumbled when the leaves scattered everywhere. Sometimes they directly said it and sometimes they swept the leaves on their territory to ours.
I believed they hated us...

One day there was a big wind and rain and some branches broke. They leaned to the street, almost blocked the half of it. People came and asked us to clean the mess, by ourselves. No help at all. Guess we had to learn the lesson... We (four of us..the rest wasn't at home, I think) did the best as we could. We cut the branch with kitchen knives and cutter ...hahahaha.. What do you expect? Those tools were the only thing we had, man. You can imagine how long we had to finish the work. A whole day. Worse thing was, as always, the garbage man didn't take tree stuffs in his cart unless we paid more. So we took the branches to the open space and dried them and burnt them once in a while... creating smoke which once again would be the matter of grumble to the neighbor. Hahaha... were we that bad??
By the way, I took pictures of us doing that tree labor work. It was fun actually.

The incident about rambutan tree was not only that. The peak was when the neighbors suddenly did an ambush to it. At their boiling point, being bothered and annoyed by the tree, they couldn't say by us literally, right, they brought saw, chopping knife and such one morning and cut the tree!!! Seriously, man. They did cut the tree, left nothing but the main trunk!
What?????? We were choked. They cut it without permittion to the owner (the owner didn't live in Pinky house, so basically we were on our own). But the worst feeling was that we couldn't pick rambutan fruit anymore. Loosing the delightful wonderful heavenly taste of the fruit gave us a terrible shock wave. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo...!!! Why us? Why????

They did hate us.

I thought because they envied us. We had such glorious rambutan tree and they didn't. Well, they had some rambutan trees, but the fruit was nothing compare to ours. You know something ironic? They did like our fruit. We often did a surveillance behind the drape, they didn't realized being watched, and caught them stealing the fruit. Not stealing if you took bags of it, right? So it was a robbery. And not only one of head of family who did that. The fathers, the mothers, the children and relatives took the fruit without permittion. Huh!!
It was a war then!
We told the owner about the "oppression" that we were going through and he gave us the green signal to harvest the fruit before they do it again. And we did.
The living room was full with rambutan fruit, man. Hehehehehe...

I had one good memory about the rambutan fruit. One afternoon our door was knocked by a man. He blushed when he asked us permittion to let him pick the fruit. We looked at each other. Was he kidding? The fruit was still very green. Was he serious asking green fruit? He said that it was for his wife. She was pregnant and the baby wanted it. Wow... so it's not just a myth.
They thanked us when we let him take as many as the baby want. We were glad that we did a good thing. They wouldn't have a drooling baby.

Slingshot
The cut rambutan tree grew again and produced lots of fruit. We shared it with the neighbor.
When Pinky house was sold, the new owner cut it to the root to rebuilding. We lost it for good. Bye bye, tree. We love you!

Book of Family

Hey hey hey, happy fasting month!

How are you guys doing? Keep it lively!

Okay, last night I couldn't sleep coz I got this idea to have a special mission on Lebaran Day. Well, not exactly on that particular day, but it will start from there when most of the members of our big family gather. I'm thinking about having a book which will record our family data, at least their birthdays and phone number. Making such a family tree. I think it's important to do and it could be the starting line to bring the family closer.
Actually I had this thought years ago. I ever interviewed my grandparents in both sides to tell about our family. I made only small family tree coz they didn't remember that well. Now the family grow bigger and babies are coming along, if I don't make a note, somehow, it's gonna be overwhelming for the next generation to recognize their anchesters.
I was inspired by my Batak friends, to tell you the truth. They have family trees and they know their anchesters, even from the first generation. I think that'a amazing.
In some javanese family in Jogja, Solo or Klaten, they also have a special gathering of "trah" which kind of forum to know each other in one big family. I think that's really cool coz the opportunities to strengthen and help each other rises. Staying in unity.
After all the people who will take you as you are and will be the tremendous support is your family, right?
So, I'm gonna do it .