I first read The Giving Tree in Ms. Connelly’s 1st grade class. I mean, it was ok and all...but I preferred laughing obnoxiously out-loud with Billy Costello and Shannon Zito listening to Shel Silvertein’s 18 Flavor’s, and how Peggy Ann McKay feigned sickeness in a last ditch effort to skip school until her glorious revelation that she woke up on a Saturday. Now, that was where the literary prowess was at!
The Giving Tree? Meh, it was kind of a downer.
36-ish years later tonight I sat down to read The Giving Tree to Whit. If truth be told, I had unsuccessfully spent the prior 5 minutes searching for my copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends, all before succumbing to plan B. I guess some things never change.
As my eyes saw the simple sketches of the humble personified tree, and my ears heard the distant and familiar prose, I was transported back to the 1980’s, not so much in mind, as in soul. I no longer viewed the story as a 5 year old in white stockings and Mary Janes, but as a 41 year old Mamma of four. So, you can imagine that by the time the tree allowed the selfish, young-man-boy to lop off the entirety of her gorgeous, prized branches for the sake of satisfying his entitled greed and hunger for that which does not satisfy, I was alligator-tears crying.
Am I the tree, or the boy?
Oh my gosh.
I’m both.
‘Come on mom...read mom,’ Whit encouraged in her soft staccatos, after a moment of confused study spent staring at my water streaming face.
By the time the tree offered her body, I had to pause and recollect my breaking voice through the sobs. Being her mom has broken me, no doubt, to the very core; in all the ways that I probably needed breaking. And yet, there’s something about being humbled and hollowed out that has made me deeply and gratefully happy.
Years later the old man comes back and the tree, once again, offers her all. The old boy-man now sits on her tired, withered stump of a body, and the story ends with a brief mention of how our beloved tree was ‘happy.’
We, however, the readers, are not left happy.
There is something about her sacrifice that seems wasteful and unappreciated, borderline abusive. It’s a hurtful and jarring parable, requiring a moral pause.
So, then…what is this story really about?
As a mom, I’m so glad that even though parenting is hard y’all...like trust me...it is h-a-r-d hard, parenting is a growing and stretching hallowed work for those of us walking around with our hearts on our sleeves. There aren’t formulas and pattern and promises bound by our control. It makes me vulenrable and causes me to do hard things like call my friends and tell them all of my ugly. It causes me to create space for both mistakes and mercy, pointed at myself, and others. It makes me laugh about how naive and judgey I used to be. Face palm.
What I do know, however, is that the sacrament of parenting is anything but wasteful. Has anything else brought me to my knees in honest dependence and desperation? What else makes me stare at my kids with a goofy, wide grin on my face because I stinking love them so much? What else makes me go from totally normal to crying when they start talking about moving out as we are pulling into the church parking lot? What else has made me believe, truly believe to my core, that living for those other than myself is where the holy literary prowess of my story is at?
But, what then are we to make of the old-man resting on the stump of the happy, spent tree?
Well, I suppose it reminds me that even when I sold all the branches, choped down the trunk, and chased the things that did not satisfy, there was someone awaiting my return, too. And, now, when I’m weary and spent myself, there’s a place of pasture to rest and restore. But I suppose that at the very root of our poem (pun intended), the love of the tree is like the love of the prodigal’s Father; offensively generous, consistently faithful, and all together true.
Take courage, fellow giving ones,
Jenn