The Tree

My daughter Aoife was a tree in the school play last December. Not a speaking role — she was very clear about this when she told us, as if we might have had expectations she needed to manage. A tree. She had branches made of coat hangers and green tissue paper and she stood at the back of the stage for forty minutes without moving, which is something she has never managed in her life outside of this specific context.

At one point the girl playing the princess sang a song and Aoife, entirely without being asked, hummed along. Just quietly, to herself, but I could see it from the third row. I'd come straight from the bakery and was holding a bag of flour I hadn't put down yet and I'm not sure what happened next exactly but my wife told me afterwards that I cried into it.

I'm not denying it. Aoife was a very good tree.

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