HE WHO PLANTS A TREE PLANTS A HOPE

I didn’t even know what Arbor Day was before the day my fourth grade teacher announced that some lucky student could win a tree!  A whole tree!   Imagine that.  It turns out there is an entire day devoted to trees.  On the last Friday of April across the country we celebrate trees and we’ve been doing this since the first Arbor Day in 1872 when one million trees were planted in Nebraska of all places.  Mrs. Johnson explained to our class that this year there was going to be an Arbor Day Essay contest and we were all going to enter and compete.  I was ecstatic and knew I could win this tree.  

Oh how I longed to win that tree.  I sat at school and imagined Sister Thomas Moore announcing over the intercom that the winner of the Arbor Day Essay Contest was Laura Wachter!  I pictured all of the kids turning to look at me in awe that I had won a whole tree.  And I thought about that tree that I was going to win.  A maple maybe, so tall and slender, bursting with color as Autumn rolls in, or  a weeping willow - a waterfall of thin reedy branches draping one over the other,  perhaps a mighty oak tall and majestic and spreading its shade across the lawn.  I thought I might surprise everyone by donating my prize tree to the school.  I even found a place we could plant it and for years and years to come people would talk about the fourth grade writer who had won the pulitzer prize of grade school essays and was so humbled by the experience that she donated the tree to the school in the hopes of providing shade and beauty for generations to come.  I would be stared at and whispered about and people would wonder about my generosity.  

So, I wrote that essay.  I labored over it for days writing about the trees and how they changed over the seasons.  I wrote about my love of trees and about the life trees gave to all of us.  I wrote and rewrote and sweated over that essay as only a nine year old can.  And when the day came to turn it in I rewrote it in my beautiful Catholic penmanship on my white lined paper careful to not make any erasures.  I handed it to Mrs. Johnson so proud of myself, so certain it was a winner.   

The day came for the announcement of the winner of the Arbor Day Essay Contest but instead of Sister Thomas Moore announcing it over the intercom for the whole school to hear, Mrs. Johnson walked up to me when we were alone in the room and quietly congratulated me on winning the Arbor Day Essay Contest.  She handed me a letter with an address where I could go to pick up the tree I had won.  

I told my Dad I wanted to go first thing in the morning so I could pick out the most beautiful of the trees and so on the day we were to go pick up my tree my Dad climbed into our Buick sedan and told me to hop in.  “But Dad” I said “how will we ever fit my tree in the car?  Maybe we should borrow a truck.  Will they deliver it?  How will I get it to the school to donate it?”  Dad chuckled.  “We’ll see what we can do” He said.  

I didn’t understand as my Dad drove down the street.  This was a regular neighborhood.  How could someone have these big trees at their house.  Where would they put them all?  I knew there had been a winner for every school in the area so that was a good number of trees. 

We drove up to an aqua colored house with white trim.  The garage door was open and right inside the garage door were three big plastic trash cans.  In each of the these cans  were about 15 trees ready to be planted.  Now when I say trees that is a real stretch.  They were small branches with roots. These are not trees I thought.  These are sticks.  But I glued a smile on my face as the man pulled a stick with roots on it out of one of the  garbage cans.  It wasn’t a beautiful, colorful maple, nor a weeping willow nor a tall majestic oak tree.  It was a white ash whatever that was.  “Are you sure that’s a kind of tree?”  I asked.  “It sounds more like something you would find leftover in your fireplace or BBQ.”   We threw it in the trunk and headed home to find a spot to plant my stick.  For I couldn’t donate it to the school now, I would be embarrassed to donate such a sad excuse for a tree.  My Dad found just the spot and the two of us dug a hole and planted my stick.  My siblings all came out to join us and made fun of the tree I had won.   And from that day on they didn’t let up.  When we played baseball in the backyard, they would proclaim my tree as one of the bases hanging on it, running it over, even as I tried to protect it.  My Dad finally put a  fence of chicken wire around it to discourage the vandalism committed by my friends and siblings.  They all laughingly called it Laura’s stick tree and the more they made fun of it the more attached I got to it.  I became very protective of it and told everyone that one day I would get married under that tree.  They laughed at my fantasy and went back to playing ball.  

For the next few years I watered that tree and took care of it.  Time and time again I would stand next to it to see how much bigger it had to get for me to stand under it.  As it grew it actually started looking like a tree.  It grew little branches which my Dad lovingly pruned to make it a fine shape.  At times I was growing faster than the tree and it just couldn’t get bigger than me but then in high school when my growth slowed and it was well established there was finally hope that one day I would be able to stand under that tree and get married just as I had hoped.  

Ten years later I was to be married and I told my future husband I wanted to get married in our backyard under my tree.  But it wasn’t to be.  The Catholic Archdiocese in our area had a rule that you could not be married at a private home so my dreams were dashed.  But never one to give up, I lovingly cut a couple of the branches off of that tree, put them in a vase and placed them on the altar of the church where we were wed.  It wasn’t the same, I never realized my dream.  

When I was in my 30’s and my parents moved out of the home we grew up in I grieved more than anything the loss of that tree.  By now it was a full grown tree and provided the shade and beauty that I had envisioned so many years before.  Years later when I took my boys to show them where I used to live we snuck into the backyard and there it was, my tree, in all of its glory.  

More recently I went back home and once again snuck to the backyard and it was gone.  Someone had cut down my tree.  That tree that to me was hopes and dreams, winning and pride, embarrassment and disappointment all rolled up into one - that tree was gone.  My heart broke just a little bit that day and I never returned to my childhood home again.