The Giving Tree
posted Monday February 22nd, 2010
Last night Sophie brought me a book to read before bed — The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.
I know it well, although I also knew for sure (despite the fact that we own way too many books I have trouble keeping track of) that I’d never read it to either of my girls.
“The Giving Tree” is one of those children’s books you buy before you have kids. After you have them, you realize that a story like this — about a tree that loves a boy so much she gives him her apples, her branches and finally her trunk — is too impossibly sad. Not something you can easily share with your child.
But Sophie chose it and I read it, and as I read it I thought (in that sick way we can all multitask at this point) about how it seemed more okay to read it to Sophie than to Annabelle — and not just because Annabelle’s got two years on Sophie.
Sophie loved cuddling and listening to a story, and don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of stories she does “get,” but not this one.
Will she ever?
Yes, for sure. Someday, I’m certain, she will, and we’ll read it together and cry. For me to say I’m sure she will someday get it is big. I once wrote that I strongly doubt she’ll ever “get” the book “A Wrinkle in Time.” I was chastized for that, so for now, my jury will at least remain out, if not undecided.
But “The Giving Tree,” yes. Sophie will fully understand loss. Today she doesn’t, which frankly is okay with me. Today is the one-year anniversary of Ray’s mom’s death, and I know I’m corny and always on the lookout for signs, but I did find it interesting that Sophie handed me this sad, sweet book about an apple tree on the eve of this anniversary.
Sophie doesn’t really understand why Ray had an apple tree planted in our front yard a couple months ago. Last week (coincidentally — I’m sure even he didn’t remember — it was the anniversary of the day his mother went into the hospital) he sent me a picture of the first blossom on the tree.
This morning it had several more. We haven’t said anything to the girls (yet, anyway) about the date. Annabelle misses her grandma enough; would this be rubbing it in, to say something?
For months Sophie said, “I miss Grandma” whenever she was tired. It was like a mantra, hard to know if she really knew what she was saying, even, or if it was just one of her conversation starters.
Someday, she will get it, just like she’ll get “The Giving Tree”. And I suspect that will be both a sad day, and a happy one.
As with much in life, I can never decide if “The Giving Tree” really has a happy ending or not.
I absolutely can’t stand that book. Love is giving and giving when the other person abuses you? Ugh.
My own mother refused to read “The Giving Tree,” because she thought it was a warped view of motherhood. She also spurned “Runaway Bunny,” for the same reason. Another verboten book in our house was “Curious George” (neocolonialism, misbehavior rewarded, just not great text…). Richard Scarry was also disallowed because it doesn’t really tell a story. It’s not that my mom is a moralist, it’s more that she’s an English teacher and a book-lover, so I grew up in a house full of fabulous books that no one else has ever heard of: The Greennough series, Millions of Cats, and everything by Daniel Pinkwater.
Last night, my own Sophie found “Curious George” on the shelf and asked me to read it — and, in the midst of reading it, I suddenly understood my mother better. I think I’m going to give that book away. There are just too many other good books out there. Even though I don’t want to be censoring, even though I would like to vary Sophie’s book diet away from Doctor Meow’s Big Emergency (which I have now read aloud far more than a hundred times), and even though no book is perfect (we do read Runaway Bunny, because I love those pictures, but I vary the words when I read it), and even though I think that books should sometimes be uncomfortable, still: we don’t need to read The Giving Tree.