about a tree

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fallen tree

Last week, I think it might have even been on Tuesday, I read The Giving Tree to Evelyn.  I haven’t read that book in years.  In case you’re unfamiliar (or forget) the story, a boy loves a tree and as he grows older the trees offers him herself (apples to sell for money, wood to build with, etc.) trying to make the boy happy.  And in the end, the tree is an old stump on which the boy, now an old man, can sit and rest.

Later that day, my dad texted us all to let us know that the tree that has been standing for several decades in front of the family house fell down unexpectedly in the middle of the night.  No one and nothing was hurt, part of it just fell into the street and into the neighbor’s driveway, and the rest needed to be taken down so it wouldn’t fall on the house.

I say the “family house” because it is a home that has been in our family for over 50 years.  My great-grandparents lived in it.  My grandparents lived in it.  My family lived in it.  My grandmother has recently been living in it again.  But it is being sold out of the family for the first time next month.  We (more specifically my parents) have been over there helping my grandmother clean out closets and move her things.

The wall-paper in the small bedroom is still the same teddy bear wall paper that was my nursery theme when my parents brought me home from the hospital.  There is a Christmas tree growing tall in the back yard that my parents planted.  The first dog I ever had is buried in the back corner.

If I had a lot more money, I’d buy the house and do the remodel myself.  It’s going to be hard to drive down that street and see someone else making that house into something different.

It’s going to be hard to no have a particular reason to drive down that street.  (It’s a beautiful street.)

But we have to let go of things and move on and tree reminded me of that last week.

I got a picture in front of the tree a few weeks ago, and picture of me with Evelyn sitting on my lap, because as a child we took so many pictures sitting on that little brick wall out front and as a child I remember wrapping my arms around the tree trunk and drawing on the bark with crayons.  I wanted a picture to remember the tree before the house sold.  But I assumed I would be remembering it because my family no longer had the house, not because the tree would be gone.

In a way, I’m glad the tree fell on it’s own last week.  It would have been harder to see someone else pulling it up.  But instead, it did the hard thing first and gave us all permission to let go and move on.

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