In the Shadow of the Giving Tree

I've been thinking a great deal lately about Shel Silverstein's 1964 children's classic The Giving Tree. On the surface, it is a story about a boy and a tree who loves him. She gives him everything he could possibly desire – shade, sustenance, enjoyment, laughter. At first, this giving gives them both a sense of happiness. Yet ultimately, the tree is consumed by the boy's desires and ends up as nothing but a roting stump on which the boy, now an old man, can rest.

I remember this book as one of my childhood favorites. (I loved all Silverstein works for their variable “life lessons,” which children are especially good at detecting if only, at first pass, on the literal level.) Yet, I also remember feeling a profound disappointment when arriving at the end and learning that there was nothing left of the tree but a stump. I flipped back and forth between the last page and the back cover, desperate to discover that a few pages had indeed been removed.

How could the story end this way? Wasn't love supposed to do more than eat us up and render us near useless? As an avid consumer of fairy-tales, I always expected that somehow through the magic of love (and perhaps water and fairy dust), the tree would re-grow its branches when the boy returned, and instead of remaining an old and weary man, he too would be rendered young again to play in the tree's branches. (Doesn't this sound more like the Disney classics our generation was raised on?)

Of course, this story is also a fable about motherhood. In fact, in Judith Warner's Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, she suggests that The Giving Tree has become the prevailing metaphor for motherhood. Not only the motherhood of the 1950s and 60s when Silverstein was writing this work and women were being drawn in helplessly by the feminine mystique like moths to a porch light (especially those new fangled ones from the Sears and Roebuck catalog), but that this tale, which has been translated into more than 30 languages and is the writer's most famous work, still captivates us as the way we experience motherhood today, more than fifty years later.

Warner gives many examples to build her case from her interviews with hundreds of women and from stories in popular media in which uber self-sacrificing moms are rendered the great heroines of our time (as perhaps they should be?).

I can't say that Warner is wrong exactly. (When I mused about this with my mother-in-law, she agreed that sometimes, you are consumed by your children. And when I recently discussed the decision of when to wean with one of my best friends, she said simply that I would know, that there would come a day when I would feel as though my child was sucking the calcium right out of my bones.)

I also can't say that my childhood distaste for the ending of The Giving Tree was because of some intrinsic sense that I would be a mother someday and I feared the self-sacrificing love it would require of me.

What I can say is that at a gut level, I found (and still find) the story simply dissatisfying. While I loved the moments when the tree provided shade, shelter, even the fruit of its own labor, (an apt metaphor for breastfeeding, planting a garden, and/or bringing home a paycheck and groceries, all things that have been required of me in the past year) I could never understand why exactly the tree didn't tell the boy to build his house out of dirt or go buy some fiberglass when he wants to build a boat and sail away.

Yet, stories are things that get into your bones, especially if we grow up in their constant presence. And, in many ways, I did grow up in the shadow of The Giving Tree. I grew up fearing that without fighting against it, motherhood, by its very nature, would render me small, frightened and cloistered like my mother was always portraying her mother to me. (I also grew up hearing my father say that he'd be a very rich man if it wasn't for us kids.)

However, in my one year, one month and a few hours, my experience of motherhood has been not a selfless act, but a profoundly selfish one. I've not been emptied, cut down or diminished, but enriched – and tangibly so – by having a child. Maybe I am naive, but I want to believe that mothers, like trees, are magical beings and can give in ways that do not come at the expense of ourselves, but that enriches both tree and child. (Even in real life, where there seems an unfortunate dearth of fairy dust.)

What I can also say is that I think we need a new story. (I do, at least. Maybe this one will work for you, too. Or even better, write your own and leave it in the comments!) Here's mine:

Once upon a time, there was a tree and there was a child.

When the child was a baby, the tree let down her leaves to make a soft bed and the wind through her branches was a lullaby. The child slept and dreamed and both the tree and child were happy.

When the child was hungry, the tree would grow fruit and the child would eat the fruit and enjoy its taste. As the juice dripped down the child's chin, the tree would laugh, the child would smile. They both were happy.

As the child grew, the tree grew and there were new branches and new leaves. The tree showed the child how to climb up into the branches and look out at the big, wide world and imagine its possibilities. And instead of making a soft bed for sleeping, the leaves were a soft place to land when the child lost balance and fell out of the tree. So the child learned to climb higher and higher and see farther and farther in the world, and they both were happy.

And although they were happy, there came a time when they were also lonely for the child was not a tree and the tree was not a child. The child also grew tired of looking out at the big, wide world and wanted to adventure in it. So, after many long nights, the tree told the child to go out and adventure.

Even though the child was scared (and the tree was also scared, but didn't want to show it), the tree helped the child pack and extra bag of fruit so that the child would not be alone in the big, wide world, but carry a piece of the tree on the journey. So, the child set out to experience the big, wide world and not just look at it. (They both, at this moment, weren't exactly sure if they'd be happy, but they wore brave faces for each other.)

While the child was off adventuring, the tree continued to grow and make fruit and the fruit fell to the ground and new trees sprung up around the first tree and the new trees brought more children.

While the child was off adventuring, the child saw and experienced many beautiful things. The child found new trees and climbed them and met other children and learned their ways. The child was indeed happy that it had been set lose upon the world by the tree.

When the child returned, the tree had grown and around it was an orchard full of trees and other children. The child too had grown into an adult and told the tree of all that was seen in the big, wide world. The child also brought back fruit from far away places and the tree and child decided to plant them in the orchard to grow new and different trees.

The child and tree leaned into each other and they looked out upon the orchard, at the children swinging from the branches of young trees. They saw that the world was made better because they both were in it, and they both were happy.