Our Giving Tree

"And the tree was happy..."

—Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree

Sometimes I think about how change swirls around me at the speed of light. Imperceptible but omnipresent. Deconstructing and reconstructing at the subatomic level leaving in its wake an indefinite number of possibilities of what could be from what was and what is. How those changes impact my life and all the decisions I make each day that splinter into a million different potential alternate realities. 

Sometimes I think too much. Always have. 

Thankfully there are immediate mindful constants, the loving anchors around me that ground me to the now: my wife, our daughters, our pets, our home, our trees. One tree in particular. The tree that my wife Amy gave me.

Twenty-four years earlier, shortly after we met, I had these big beautiful grown trees outside of my second-story apartment balcony. I don't remember what they were exactly (maybe , but they'd been there for a long time with their roots pushing up on the sidewalk below.

The city decided the trees had to go, so they were cut down, the stumps removed, and the new cement sidewalks were poured. That's when we etched our initials in the wet cement, but that didn't last; years later the sidewalk was replaced again where our initials had once dried. 

Back to when the trees were cut down, though. Amy had bought me a wonderful present: a young Japanese maple in a pot. She knew how disappointed I was that the trees were removed and wanted me to have my own tree on my balcony. 

We had the tree for years when we moved into together, and while it did grow a little, it wasn't going to grow beyond the confines of its pot. I hoped someday it would have a yard of its own. 

When we bought our house a few years later, we finally had a backyard that we could call our own. At the time we were not planning on having children, and our small home and backyard was perfect for us. It was a new development at the time and the backyard was just weeds and rocky ground. We transformed it ourselves and planted the Japanese maple in the corner of our backyard. If it lived and grew, it would fit in nicely with the other maples planted in our new neighborhood's front yards and common areas. 

Our tree then grew and thrived. We changed our minds about having children and had two wonderful daughters who grew and thrived along with our tree. Even after the time we tried to trim the tree back ourselves and ended up hacking the heck out of it thinking we might've killed it. And even after our pet bunny gnawed on the base of the tree before we wrapped chicken wire around it. 

And even with the speed-of-light changes that have happened to our family throughout the years, it's continued to grow and thrive. If we ever left this house, which there were times we considered it, we knew couldn't take the tree with us. But we haven't left, and I don't think we ever will. 

Now, 24 years after Amy gave me this tree in a pot, it gives us a canopy of loving comfort. Every year it grows full and lush, then the leaves turn brown and red and fall to the ground, only to sprout again each spring. Unlike Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, we've only taken from it the constant comfort that it gives us year after year. That's why our giving tree anchors me. Otherwise, we just let it be; our tree is happy.