And
the Tree Was Happy
I
consider myself a moderate in most things, more things than anyone
cares to know. I am moderately musical, moderately creative,
moderately introverted, moderately liberal, moderately feminist, and
moderately lazy. One of the only convictions I have is that nothing I
own is worth my life. So, should a situation arise where there is a
fire in my home, the first thing I would do is get my family and
myself to safety. If I had time to rescue my cat, my tablet computer,
my parents' wills, my laptop, my rat, my flute, my clarinet, my
mother's jewelry, my computer's hard-drive, and anything of real
monetary or sentimental value, then the fire must not be
all-consuming and I would not have to perform this so-called
'rescue.' However, if I did proceed to choose an item I could
order on Amazon.com for ten dollars, you could bet your buttons that
it would not be a tawdry Harlequin teenage romance. I would
choose The
Giving Tree by
Shel Silverstein, arguably the most influential book of my childhood.
My
childhood was one to be envious of; it was stock full of dancing,
singing, twirling, joking, and laughing, often ending in a childish
disaster. One pervasive aspect of that experience was the warmth of
the orange tree growing in my backyard. My sister and I, along with
our fellow neighborhood kids Sam and Parke, would play-act as
outdoorsmen with the tree being our 'base camp' and we would
collect fallen oranges and use a juicer to extract the juice. We
would use the leaves, alongside pilfered bottle caps, as currency in
our market where we sold dye from the bougainvillea flowers that dot
the chain-link fence separating the yard from the foreign lands of
the neighbors and every night, exhausted from the day's 'efforts',
my sister and I would beg our mom for a story. On the days where she
did not just make up a random, nonsensical story for us on the spot,
she would read from our Dr. Seuss books and, of course, The
Giving Tree,
a story about a tree and her love for a little boy as he grew to be
an old man. As he aged, the boy forgot about the tree, but the tree
was always there for him upon his return and the tree ended up giving
her apples, branches, and trunk to him to make him happy.
After
Hurricane Jeanne in 2004, the orange tree uprooted and died. The
Waste Management Authority had the task of dragging it out of the
backyard. Needless to say, Sam, Parke, my sister, and I were all
quite devastated. The following night we held a funeral ritual, and
by the end of the year we had a new designated market spot and drank
store-bought orange juice.
A
few years later, Sam entered Middle School, and she was too busy to
join us outside. The next year, my sister followed suit, and the next
year, Parke left as well. So, like the Giving Tree at the end of the
story, I was left all alone in the fading glory of childhood.
Now,
as a teenage girl in high school, if someone were to pose the
question to me, "What is your favorite book?" I would not
provide The
Giving Tree as
an answer, for it is not my favorite book. The
Giving Tree represents
the part of me that I have lost with age, the part of me that still
longs to be outside swinging in the branches and collecting the
oranges and climbing its trunk and pretending to hold a market and
playing hide-and-go-seek and sleeping in its shade. To me, The
Giving Tree is
not a book that is read then placed on a dusty shelf to be picked up
later when I feel nostalgic and sentimental like some old fool. It
reminds me of where I came from, my origins, and where I must go in
the future. For even when I go off to college and get a job and
retire, I know there will always be a giving tree here at home for me
to sit and rest upon when all is said and done with my life.
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