Dedicated to Sophie Warner, who also left us before we were ready to let her go.
AN: This is a narrative assingment i had for school which i entered in a state writing competition aswell. i had the idea for this story while on a picnic in a beautiful park with my beautiful girlfriend. She asked me to tell her a story and i did and while telling her a story i had an idea for a story about a tree which was made up by lots of other stories all linked to the tree, and here it is now, i hope you enjoy.
"Grandma!" wailed Natalie sobbing. “They’re going to cut down our tree!”
"What did you say?" her grandma asked slowly, pulling the girl into her arms.
"They’re cutting down our tree," she managed to cough out into her grandma’s shoulder.
“Take me,” was all the old woman said.
Hand in hand they hurried, as fast as a woman of eighty odd years can go, over a small hill to a majestic oak tree towering over everything in the small valley.
By the time they reached the tree, a swarm of other people had already gathered around it’s base like bees, and about thirty metres away from the tree surrounded by collection of massive trucks, dropping comments into a radio, was a man in an orange vest.
"Why are they cutting down the tree?" the girl's grandma asked anyone who would listen.
A man who looked about thirty, replied dismissively: "Something about an overpass,"
"A what?" Natalie cocked her head like a magpie.
"A great big road," he elaborated.
"A road?" she exclaimed angrily. "They can't take down our tree to build a road!"
"Your tree?" he enquired.
"We have looked after this tree forever" she stated proudly.
"As a mater of fact so have I," he smiled, "and it me, if truth be told."
"Really?" the girl asked, "how?”
"Yes, really," he chuckled.
"It was 1997 and I used to always come out to this field and feed the ducks, but one glorious day I saw the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, sitting under this tree reading.
"Back then I was only eighteen years old and very shy, and it took me two weeks to pluck up the courage to talk to her. After I had managed to speak to her, well, it turned out she had also been wishing I would come and talk to her.
“As time went on we became great friends and both looked forward to seeing each other at the tree, and on one rainy day, although we had no reason to be there due to the rain, we both came to the tree hoping to see each other and as we danced in the rain under our tree we shared our first kiss.
"Well, we continued seeing each other, and four years later we were standing underneath this tree again, getting married.
"Five years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer, and a year later she passed away under our tree. Every day for the next year I came down here to the tree, it helped me cope and I helped it grow.”
“That’s really romantic,” the girl smiled at him after a short pause, “this is your tree as well.”
The tree’s leaves rustled with memory.
“A beautiful story,” another man complimented who must have heard the story and moved over to listen.
“Actually,” he continued, “I have my own story with this tree.”
“Do you really?” the girl asked excitedly. “Tell it to us?”
“Alright then,” he smiled, gazing off to another time.
“The year was 1982, I was twenty two and my life looked like it would lead me nowhere, I had just about given up on everything.
“I was walking through this park one day when I saw a group of kids laughing and striking the trunk of this grand yet fairly young oak tree with sticks and stones, I almost turned around but something inside me compelled me to act, maybe it was because I felt just as helpless as this tree was.
“’Stop!’ I cried as I ran over to them, ‘You’re killing it!’
“The boys were all at least four years younger than me, but there for four of them and one of me, for a second I thought they might turn their blows on me instead but I held my gaze and they ran.
“For the next few weeks I cared for this oak, it got sicker and sicker but I didn’t give up. I pruned off the dead leaves and repaired the bruised and battered bark as best I could before it could die. After weeks of hard work, I brought the tree back and in doing so I really brought myself back. I applied for a job in the local Café, which I got, the owner saying how he could really see my confidence and determination.”
“Thank you,” the girl smiled up at the man.
The man smiled in return.
“What’s your story with the tree?” the first man asked the girl, then noticing the grandma properly directed his gaze at her.
The girl smiled and looked up at her grandma.
The old woman moved forward as the now very large crowd surrounding the two men, the grandma and the girl, directed its gaze upon her.
“One year,” she began,” on my sixth birthday, my father came home from work with a small, oak tree sapling. At the time it was no bigger than my leg and that very morning we went out into our front paddock and planted it in a small valley.
When my father was sent off to the war, I spent hours upon hours just tending to, and sitting under the tree thinking about him. Finally in 1944 he was sent back to us due to serious injuries.
“On the first of August 1945 he passed away and a month later so did my mother. They were buried side by side under the young tree my father and I had planted.
“Everyday since I have visited the tree, apart from Natalie, it is the only part of my family that I have left.”
When the old woman had finished there was an awed silence and the great oak smiled down on them with eyes filled with the memories it had shared with the people around it.
The tree was not felled that day, but as the girl climbed the hill the next morning, instead of her familiar, old tree, there was a ghost white stump covered with countless tight rings. There were wavy rings where the tree had been damaged, greater distance between the rings where it had rained a lot that year and right in the centre of the stump, was a fabric bag containing a single acorn and a note: ‘I’m sorry,’ signed from the man in the orange vest.
