It started with a breeze. The whispering drafts wriggled through the boughs and branches of the ancient oak. The leaves rustled, the limbs creaked. One acorn fell.
There was nothing remarkable about this acorn. It fell on the head of a little boy passing beneath the tree. He bent to pick it up, admiring the glossy shell, and put it in his pocket. He walked home with it, proudly displaying his find to his mother who took it from his dusty fingers and said, “If you bury this, one day a tall tree will grow. So tall it’ll touch the sky.”
The little boy smiled. He snatched the acorn from his mother’s open palm and ran out the back door, thinking of how big his tree would be. Digging a hole with excited fingers, he plopped the acorn down, and scooped the dirt over it. He sat staring at the small mound of freshly-turned soil. “Mom! How long will it take to grow?”
His mother came out the back door, kneeling next to him. “A while. It won’t spring up over night, you know. These things take time.”
“Why won’t it be big now?”
“Cause that takes away the magic. If it grew up fast, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate it when it does, just like people. Right now the tree is a baby, we just have to wait for it to grow up.”
The boy’s mother led him inside, but the boy wouldn’t let it go. Every day he would check the little spot where he had planted the acorn. When he started school, he would watch the spot every day when he got home. But soon, the excitement was lost, and the boy gradually forgot.
But the acorn didn’t.
As soon as the little boy buried the seed, the acorn had begun the long process of becoming what the little boy had wanted. An oak tree.
First, the acorn sent out roots. The roots stretched for a long distance in each direction. Every drop of rain that fell around that little acorn was soaked up and fed the little seed. After a while, the acorn sent out a sprout, but the boy had stopped really caring long before. The tiny, twig-like thing sent out leaves, which slowly unfurled and collected sunlight, piping it down into the trunk, which was now no larger than a small stick.
Some time after the sprout emerged, the boy’s mother pointed out that he hadn’t checked the seed in a while, so the boy loped through the backyard, bending down to look at his plant.
His small face lit up and he turned around, running back toward the house. “Mom! Mom!” he shouted. “It grew! It’s a plant now!”
The next day, the boy and his mother went to the store. They bought a tall, narrow board and a ruler. The boy’s father cut a point at one end with their saw and the boy marked the board every inch to measure the growth.
The boy stuck the board into the dirt behind the plant and measured its height. Three-and-a-half inches.
The boy would measure the tree every week and write the height in a little journal. Six inches. Ten inches. Seventeen inches. The boy would take pictures and tape them into the pages of the journal, writing down the date and time. In less than a year the tree was nearly five feet tall.
“Isn’t it cool Mom?” the boy asked.
“Yes. It’s growing much faster than I thought, though,” She stared at the tree through the kitchen window, wondering why it grew so fast.
The tree knew. It grew so fast because the little boy loved it so.
Every day the tree would wake up. It would straighten it’s trunk and flatten it’s leaves, and breathe in…and breathe out…breathe in…breathe out. It would take in all air it could and breathe out oxygen, so the boy could breathe easy when he was near. Every day the tree would stand up tall and work harder than any tree ever could to grow.
And every day the boy would come home, look up at the tree’s ever-heightening green leaves, and smile brightly. “You’ve grown,” he would say. Sometimes he would pat the tree’s trunk or stroke its leaves if he could reach high enough.
Then the boy would sit cross-legged on the ground, and do his homework or read until the sun went down and his mom would call him inside. Sometimes when it wasn't too cold or too warm, he would sneak out again, when his parents were asleep, sleeping bag and flashlight in hand. He would camp out there, and sometimes wake up curled around the expanding trunk, at which point he would run inside to get ready for school. Once he had dressed in a jumbled, hasty manner, he would dash back out to say goodbye to the tree before running to catch the bus.
His teachers were happy. The boy got better grades, finished his homework. He didn’t get as tired and raised his hand at nearly every question. His parents weren’t happy. They liked that he was doing better in school, but it worried them how much time he spent with the tree instead of his friends.
“It’s not normal,” his father would say.
“We’re worried,” his mother would say.
“Why?” the boy would ask.
His parents would try to answer, but invariably fail. The boy didn’t understand. He knew there was nothing wrong.
He liked being with the tree because he felt safe. He would curl up against the thick trunk, and look up at the towering branches, now nearly fifteen feet above him, and everything would fall into place. The world felt…right. He wanted his family to understand, but he knew they wouldn’t. He was the only one who could, he and the tree.
Life continued. The tree grew. Fifty feet tall and ten feet around. The boy grew. Six foot three and a grown man now. He graduated college, got married, and moved into the house his parents sold to him. The house he grew up in. The house with a fifty foot oak tree in the back yard.
When the man and his wife finished unloading the boxes from the back of the truck, he took her out back.
“That tree is huge,” his wife said. “It must be ancient.”
The man shook his head. “This tree is younger than I am. I planted the acorn myself,” He walked to the tree, and found the remnants of the pole, marked every inch with black marker. He laid a hand on the trunk and a feeling of welcome flooded through him. He felt the tree groan and sway. He felt it straighten its trunk and flatten its leaves, and breathe in…and breathe out…breathe in…breathe out.
The tree had come alive once again.
Every day the man would wake up. He would get dressed and eat breakfast, then go out back and say goodbye to the tree before going to work. When he came home, he and his wife would go out and eat dinner under the tree, and sit and talk until the sun went down, and they would go inside. Sometimes, on nights that weren’t too cold or too warm, the man and his wife would pitch a small tent and camp under the tree. And they would wake up, curled amongst the roots and hurry back inside to get ready for the day.
Soon, the man and his wife had a son of their own. He was small, to the tree, smaller than the man had been when he first found the acorn. But he grew. He began to crawl under the tree, then walk under the tree then play under the tree and read under the tree and sleep under the tree. And the very summer, before he was to start school, he was sitting under the tree, reading a book and munching on an apple, when a breeze whistled past. The whispering drafts wriggled through the boughs and branches of the oak. The leaves rustled, the limbs creaked. One acorn fell.
There was nothing remarkable about this acorn. It fell on the head of the little boy sitting beneath the tree. He leaned to pick it up, admiring the glossy shell, and put it in his pocket. He walked inside with it, proudly displaying his find to his father who took it from his dusty fingers and said, “If you bury this, one day a tall tree will grow. So tall it’ll touch the sky.”
The little boy smiled. He snatched the acorn from his father’s open palm and ran out the back door, thinking of how big his tree would be.
