"...The Giving Tree is about a Tree who is in love with a Boy who abuses her during their entire relationship..."
The Giving Tree, August 8, 2006
The rumor on the internet is that if you read a book to a baby in utero, and read the same book to it every day, when the baby is born, it will recognize the words and be comforted.
We started reading
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein to KilBaby. Shel's picture is on the back of the book and he looks like a Hamas guerrilla. But apparently he writes a mean children's book. I hadn't read it before- either it wasn't around when I was little or my parents never loved me.
SPOILER ALERT!
The Giving Tree is about a Tree who is in love with a Boy who abuses her during their entire relationship. As their lives unfold, the Boy cons the Tree into giving him her leaves, her apples, her branches and finally her trunk. In the bittersweet December of their lives, the Boy is a grumpy, selfish old man who never learned to share, and The Tree is an ugly stump.
Nice tale of co-dependency, Shel. After the Tree unloaded all her apples, I could see where this was going. I got angry. And when the Boy stopped by to complain that he wanted to build a house, I was like, "Noooooo!"
Too late, the Tree happily de-branched herself. Is this what being a parent is like? You get stripped of all your assets and you don't even mind?
Noooooo! I don't want to end up a sat-upon stump who's thrilled when her Boy visits every ten years to whine about how hard things are.
When the Boy was hinting about picking all the Tree's apples to sell for spending cash, the Tree should've said, "take ONE apple and use the seeds to grow your own god damn tree, you endless mooch."
But then the Boy would've started crying, "nooooo" and the Tree would've given in after three minutes and said, "ok, take my apples. Just stop crying."
