About the Giving Tree

The truth is that the tree in the previous post was already cut down. We didn’t do it. I don’t need to report to the FTC that we received a boat or a house or a bushel of apples in exchange for the photo. It was a stump when we found it, and I have no idea if the tree ever gave or loved at all. For all I know it did nothing but take, and it could very well have deserved to die.

Also, the boy is not sad. He is doing this thing called “acting.” You could learn a lot from him, Nic Cage.

Here’s what happened:

We were almost home from the farmers’ market. We were on our bikes. The boys were between the rainbow dyes of a shared shaved ice and the promised painting of the hard boiled eggs that waited at home. I had fresh tulips sticking out of my backpack. The sun was warm and high above us. We could pass for a photograph.

There was a woman playing her ukulele under a large willow along the edge of the path and we slowed down as we rode by. That’s when we saw the stump. It was just siting there.

“Hey,” I called to the boys. “Come over here and let me take your picture.”

Zane jumped up first.

“Look,” he shouted. “I’m a sundial.”

He made a few more poses in the warm sunshine, the sound of a ukulele floating from the tree behind us.

“Our Easter eggs are white,” he said for no apparent reason.

“Don’t be racist,” I answered. He continued to work the camera, which in this case was my iPhone. He looked like he was in pain. “Now what are you doing?”

“You said to be fartsy.”

“Artsy. Get off the stump and let your brother have a turn.”

Atticus took over. He also opened with the sundial.

“It’s like the Giving Tree,” he said.

“And you’re like Einstein. What did you think we were doing out here?”

“Should I look sad?” he asked.

“Own it,” I said.

So he did, and then we got back on our bikes and went home.

The ukulele faded quickly, but the sun stayed up for hours.