When our first son was born, we planted a cherry tree. It grew as he did, and we started having picnics under the tree when he was three or four years old. When his brother was born the fall after he turned three, we decided to plant another cherry tree of a different kind the following spring. By the time, the boys were old enough to climb trees the first cherry tree was big enough to climb. It had the large, sweet cherries that taste so good without cooking. They would both climb up to pick cherries to for that night’s desert but end up eating more than the picked. So, I usually had enough to eat a few after dinner, but not much else. I never minded because I grow everything organically and the cherries were a healthy snack.
A few years later they began making forts under the cherry trees. Their cousins or friends came over to play and they drug out their soldier costumes. It was not long after the 9/11 incident and Fireman, Police Officer and Soldier costumes were the rage at Halloween time. We always let the boys play with their costumes, the oldest passing down his too the youngest. The forts started by dragging dead limbs from other trees. They arranged them propped up against the tree trunk. Before long they realized the grass that we raked up under all the trees after mowing, made a perfect camouflage for the limbs.
One weekend my younger brother came for the weekend with his oldest boy to have a sleep over. He and my husband were very close, and he used to come have movie marathons when he had a free weekend while in Med school. This weekend my husband was in need of a new suit, so him and my brother went shopping and I went out to play with the boys. We found canteens that held water and packed peanut butter sandwiches and other snacks in the soldier packs. Then we headed to the way back (what my kids called the three lots behind the house and garage) to start building forts. The first cherry tree was visible from the driveway, so they started on it first.
I made a few trips back to the house for more water and the boys built the forts without my help. They had made them before, so I was not worried about it. They used more branches than usual and placed them closer together. Then came the grass. It was packed together from being raked really thick under the trees. They used large sections and laid them on the branches, like a grass hut. It worked very well.
Soon after they finished the first fort and had branches stacked for the second one, they heard the car pull up. The boys climbed in the forts and hid, sending me to tell the guys to go check out the boy’s forts. They looked towards the way back and did not see anything. I just told them to walk back there. The boys ended up laughing so hard because the grown-up men could not see their fort until they were almost all the way back to it.
As my boys started growing into men, that beloved cherry tree with so many good memories began to die. It made me sad, but we had to cut it down.
We discovered that a baby tree had started to grow at the base of that tree. We left it to keep growing and hope someday it will get big and fun for grandchildren to play in. We left the stump a little taller than usual and cut it in such a way as to have a seat to sit on halfway to the back of our property. The little tree is still growing although not very big yet. I hope by the time my oldest gets married and has kids that the new tree will be big enough for his first child to have a picnic underneath it. I can sit on the old stump and read to my grandchild “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein. That old Cherry Tree is the most Giving Tree as any I know of.
