PUSSYWILLOWS
© 2003, Tina L. Curtis
French Crik became important to me at an early age. From the time I was very young Dad would take my sister and I for a walk down at the crik. I can just hear the birds singing their first song of the season and seeing the earliest buds on the plants when I think of those walks.
Dad would wait until the high-water season was over so he could walk the crik bed. We spent hours skipping rocks or just admiring them. I had a rock collection at home in the garage that I was always adding to. These walks gave me the perfect chance to collect more rocks. I learned quickly to identify animals and trees. Dad would often point out where a beaver had chewed off a sapling or a collection of shells at the edge of the water where muskrats had been eating the clams. He showed us how to identify a maple, a birch, or an oak. I thought for sure that he knew the name for every bug, tree, animal, and flower. Every time we asked, he had an answer. But none of these things were what we searched for. We were looking for pussywillows. Pussywillows are the first thing to "bloom" in the spring. They are small gray fuzzy "buds" on plain sticks. There are no leaves out yet, no flowers on the trees, so these stand out among the array of leafless branches. Why look for pussywillows? I never was sure why Dad felt the need to fight the thick clusters of branches by the crik bank to get these fuzzy buds but I loved them. To rub the small fuzzies on your face would give a tickle resulting in laughter. My sister and I would tease each other all the way home by chasing each other trying to tickle one another’s cheeks. Dad always said that we were getting them for Grandma because she loved them. We did always make sure to pick extra for her as well as for home.
Grandma taught us as youngsters how to care for the pussywillows. We were never to water them! The water would allow them to keep growing into odd greenish-yellow flowers. By placing them in a vase without water, they would "die" and stay in their present state for years leaving the gray fuzzies to enjoy.
