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Bed Time Story Challenge

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

By Crystal L.Published 3 years ago 4 min read
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Bed Time Story Challenge
Photo by Munro Studio on Unsplash

Growing up I loved to read the silliest little stories. Some stories I read because they had cute little pictures in them. Other stories were because the main character had an imaginary friend. As I grew up, the stories I read became more mature and tended to be a bit on melancholic side. When I was in elementary school my teacher assigned us a list of books to read. If we could read all these books by the end of the week and make a report on my favorite one, then we'd get candy at the end of the day. Your typical strategy to get kids to read and write. Fortunately for me, I had already read most of the books on that list. But there was a few that I hadn't read before so I still had some homework to do. One of these unread books was titled "The Giving Tree." Searching around my school library, I was able to find the picture book. The first think I noticed was the mostly green cover, and a little boy looking up at a tree. It was relatively thin so I thought I had no problem of reading it within the hour.

"The Giving Tree" was about a tree who loved a boy. This little boy would come to the tree to pick off its apples to eat and play with its branches. As the boy got older, he asked more and more of the tree. The tree was wholeheartedly willing to give it anything the boy ask for, if it could. Eventually, the boy became and old man who had cut down the tree in order for the man to make a boat to travel. The tree is no longer a tree, but a stump who ultimately let the old man rest upon it as its last thing to give.

As a little girl, I didn't really understand the deeper meaning behind the story but I felt really sad for the tree. It gave so much of itself away and received nothing in return. Asking my mom why the tree let the boy take so much of itself away, she responded with just one sentence. "When you love someone so much, you are willing to give everything to see them happy." I thought about this for a long while but evidently I didn't understand. As I grew up, I eventually forgot this book but not the lesson my mother told me.

You see, my mom was a single mom for a very long time. She has six kids with two different partners. Four of them where living with her while one was in prison and another was with her ex-husband. She never gave up on her kids. She gave them everything she could even though there wasn't much to go around. I am the oldest of the girls in my family. I would always remember seeing my younger siblings beg for sugary foods, or expensive toys. Whenever she could she would give them what they wanted so that they would be happy. I would usually get angry with her because even if she tried to hide it, I always saw my mom struggling to keep up. I would see her so tired from working all day and then having to come home to take care of us. I got angry because she always gave my siblings what they wanted instead of saying no. One day, I confronted my mom about not giving my siblings everything they asked. Imagine having your 10 year old daughter scolding her mom for giving her siblings what they asked for. My mom had looked at me with a visibly shocked face, but eventually she laughed until tears rolled down her face. I felt bad for yelling at her. I started to apologize when she told me a story. A story about her childhood. When she was my age, her mom was very strict with her. She was the oldest of 9 siblings, so she had to take care of all the cleaning and washing to help her mom with everything. However, she never got praised for her hard work. Her mom always favored the younger siblings and neglected my mom because she was the oldest and shouldn't wine or ask for anything. My mom told me that she always felt lonely and was always afraid to ask for the things she wanted. She told me that when she had children, she wasn't going to me like her mom. She would work hard to be able to give her kids everything they wanted.

I was surprised to hear her story but I still didn't understand why it made her happy to give her kids something they asked for. My mom then proceeded to ask me:

"When it's someone's birthday and you want to make a gift, you make a gift that will make them happy right? Well that's what I feel when I give you and your siblings gifts. It makes me happy to see them happy."

After hearing her story, one story popped into my head. My mom is the giving tree. She gives because she loves us. This was one of the many lessons I've learned from books. I am happy that those lessons started when I was young, because they got me through a lot of hard times as a teenager.

literature
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About the Creator

Crystal L.

Welcome!

I am an advent reader of non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, and fantasy novels. I want my platform to be mainly about the short novels I write as well as a few personal stories I can share with everyone. I appreciate all my readers.

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