Francis Birkel
(1927 - 2009)

When I was five, my father came into my bedroom one night to comfort me. I had a wart on my knee and I'd scratched it until it bled. He took me outside into the summer night air, under the tall, swaying trees in the back yard of our little house on 40th street in Louisville . As he held me, he said that the tree spirits would heal my leg. Even at age five, I knew enough to suspect that tree spirits were not part of the Christian pantheon, but sound of the wind in the trees was so calming and hypnotic that I drifted off to sleep before I could protest.
I think that he was as surprised as me when the wart disappeared almost overnight. He launched into some explanation, probably about psychosomatic cures, since I don't think he really wanted me to grow up as a tree pagan, but I really didn't care. I was cured.
Thirty five years later, I woke one August night to the sound of strong winds in the cottonwood trees that ring the hillside of our house in Espanola. I could not go back to sleep. I went outside with a sleeping bag, laid down under the trees, and listened to that same hypnotic sound, and felt as cozy and secure as I did when I was drifting off in my father's arms. And then I slept.

It was the first time I met Francis, and Noor and I had just started seeing each other. Francis had come to visit and also to do Noor a favor. Yes, he had come to repair the roof of the house where his son and grandsons resided. If I remember correctly, this had been his profession as some ponit in his life. Well I wouldn't have thought much about it except he was 75 years old at the time. Now Noor is an avid rock-climber and used to challenging himself with dangerous situations. But when he decided to help his dad, he wouldn't begin without putting on his rock climbing gear for security. But his dad wouldn't consider such apparatus. That's when I realized where my husband got his gutsy nature.