The Giving Tree

My father is a mama’s boy; anyone who knows him can see it. Most nights, if you walk past his office, you’ll hear him and my grandmother in deep conversation. Each day he calls, and, without fail, she picks up, and they talk and talk. Even when her hearing started to go, they’d talk, though I don’t know how much of it she could actually hear. Thankfully, she has hearing aids now, so that problem has been solved. Teaching her how to make phone calls from her own phone is an uphill battle for another day. It’s the little wins that count.

I often think to myself, “Is this what being a good son is?” Calling every day and talking, even on the days when you’re not sure she can actually hear you, and doing all the other things good sons are supposed to do. If so, then I, unfortunately, am failing quite miserably with my weekly calls back home.

However, I don’t think daily communication determines the goodness of a child’s relationship with their parents. What counts is a child’s appreciation of their parent. I say “parent” because this article is as much a letter to my own mother as it is a general commentary on mothers.

Mom, where do I even begin? You would think a good son would start with a “thank you,” and I’ll get there; I actually promise this time. But first, I owe you an apology.

I find the relationship between a mother and a son reminiscent of the little boy and the tree in Shel Silverstein’s magnum opus, “The Giving Tree.” At the start, the tree is the boy’s whole world. He spends his days swinging from its branches, and when he’s worn out, he rests in its shade and eats its apples to satisfy his hunger, never once saying thank you, but the tree is content—he’s only young; he knows no better.

Life goes on. The boy stops visiting the tree as often, only coming back when he needs something. He takes branches to build a house or apples to sell for money. At one point, he even chops the tree to build a boat. The cheek of this kid!

All the while, “the Tree was happy” (bar the boat incident—that was a step too far. That time, “the Tree was happy … but not really”).

Finally, enough time has passed for the little boy to become an older man. He returns to a stump, where the magnificent tree once stood. The tree, preempting the boy’s needy nature, tells him it has nothing left to give him, and for the first time he requests nothing; he simply asks for a “quiet place to sit and rest,” and “the Tree was happy.”

Many have lauded Silverstein’s work as a beautiful story of unconditional love; others have viewed it as a cautionary tale of servitude. I honestly didn’t think much of it for most of my life; after all, it’s a children’s book. But reflecting on it now, I didn’t need to look very hard to find myself in it.

I am that boy. I climbed your branches, ate your apples, and rarely came to you without my hands open, asking for more. And you gave, because that’s what good, loving mothers do, or so society would lead us to believe. After all, if a mother’s love asks for nothing in return, then it doesn’t need an apology either. This sentiment reminds me of the iconic phrase from the 1970s hit and Harvard cult classic, “Love Story,” in which Jenny Cavilleri says to Oliver Barrett, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Peter Bogdanovich mocks this line in his 1972 screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand) repeats the line to her love interest, Howard Bannister, ironically played by Ryan O’Neal, who starred as Oliver Barrett in “Love Story.” In contrast to the latter film, this time he replies, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

And he’s right! What kind of nonsensical line is that? Love precisely means saying you’re sorry. So here it is, Mom, the apology I owe you. I am sorry for all the times a flashing light or loud noise pulled my attention away from what mattered when I was growing up. I could say those distractions explain the years of plates left by the sink (unwashed, of course) or the towels that just missed the hook and found rest on the bathroom floor, but that would be a cop-out—come to think of it, the towel thing was last month—sorry about that!

My sorries were always said with a smile, as were, I now realize, your “It’s fine.” I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t even know I had upset you because mothers become quite good at hiding it behind a smile. You’ve probably been good at it your whole life. “I promise it won’t happen again!” I would say, words I’m sure you’ve grown tired of hearing and promises you knew I’d never keep, but this time, unlike the past thousand times, I really, truly mean it—I promise.

So thank you.

Thank you for holding me in your shade: protecting me from scraped knees, bad days, and monsters in the dark. Thank you for the apples, for helping whenever I needed it, for the home-cooked meals, and for the hard-fought games of Scrabble across the dining table. Thank you for the branches, giving me a sturdy foundation to climb higher and aim for things I couldn’t even conceive on my own. Thank you for it all. Even though I may have said it then, it never hurts to say it again, this time in print, so it’s going nowhere.

In Silverstein’s story, the boy only stops asking for things when what remains of the tree is a stump. I intend to be better than that boy. I want to sit in your shade not to escape the heat but to tell you about my day and hear about yours. I want to bring you water when you’re thirsty, keep you growing as long as I can, and be a better son than I was the day before, and so on.

So, Mom, expect a few more phone calls, and this time I won’t be asking for another Felipe’s gift card—I promise.

Noah Basden ’29 (nhbasden@college.harvard.edu) wants you to call your parents!