A few days ago, I wailed like a child. Why had my mother cut down the century-old red oak tree that had perched on a bank at the edge of our front yard?
The tree shed acorns that crunched under our feet—a nuisance for lawn-mowing, I guess, but a pleasure for us kids. We hurled them across the street, or at cars, or at our neighbors' windows on Halloween. The two trunks of the tree had fused around a strip of metal someone must have stuck between them long ago: when we played on the slippery bank we used the strip to haul ourselves up from the road. I watched the tree's leaves turn the colors of the seasons—green to yellow to orange to red to rust--and peered at their veins and burls, like the warty skin of grandmothers.
The tree meant something to me—it was always there.
When I heard from my sister that my mother had cut it down, I was dumbfounded: Why? Didn’t she know how I felt? Why hadn't she asked? There was no way to bring it back.
The truth, of course, is that I’ve been gone from my childhood home for over 40 years. The house is no longer my home. My mother has every right to do what she wants with her yard.
But it hurts. I want to know: will she count the rings on the stump? Will she save a slice of the tree for me?
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