Someone once told me that everyone has a Shel Silverstein Giving Tree. A tree that means something to them.
My Giving Tree is a tulip magnolia that grows across the street from my childhood home. I loved that tree and how its large flamboyant pink flowers seemed to shout “spring” at the beginning of the season. Then just as quickly as they blossomed, their petals dropped almost all at once, as if they were bowing—curtains closing as the next plant in the spring line-up pops up for its act.
The woman who lived in the house of my Giving Tree took care of me as a child. When I knew her, she was an older, Czechoslovakian woman. She passed away when I was in high school. She was the first true loss that I ever experienced. Right away new people moved into her home and they changed the color of the house, the type of siding, the fence. But my tree stayed the same. It has been over twenty years since her passing, and much has changed as life does, yet that tree still stands.
In Paducah, my son’s Giving Tree is a white ash. My son rides his toy tractor in seemingly endless loops around the tree, chases the dogs around the tree, picks up its fallen branches declaring many of them his special stick, and swings from our tree swing, laughing and daring my husband to push him higher.
At first thought, trees seem so stationary, stoic, and a simple backdrop to our every day. But in reality, they give us LIFE.
