My husband is the sentimental kind. He is always doing something romantic or heartwarming or meaningfully symbolic. Plus he is very imaginative. (I, on the other hand, believe deeply that creativity is the art of concealing your sources!) But I digress. I am about to share one of his great ideas and you can borrow it. He made it up but it's not patented or copyrighted or anything so feel free to plagiarize.
When we brought Katie, our firstborn, home from the hospital, Paul made a trip to the nursery. But not upstairs to her room - he went to the other kind, you know, where you get trees. He bought a little sapling of his most favorite kind of tree - sugar maple - and cut it to the exact length that Katie measured on the day she made her entrance at Piedmont Hospital. (Actually, he bought TWO of them because he knew I would suffer a fit of apoplexy if the tree died. So we had "the Katie Tree"....and backup....he is a very wise husband...just sayin...)
Three years later, Paul made another nursery trip to purchase a Mary tree (OK, he got two of them again. I still haven't changed.) We loved those trees. We made pictures of the girls on their birthdays beside the trees, watching all of them grow.
And then we had to leave the Katie and Mary trees. The phone company wanted Paul in NC and he felt that would be too long a commute. I thought we should uproot those maples and take them with us but he felt they should stay. Sort of our contribution to the ecosystem, I guess. A group of very loving and amazingly thoughtful friends from church supplied us with a gift certificate to a nursery in Charlotte....to buy new Katie and Mary trees. And that's exactly what we did.
After a couple of years of watering and fertilizing, the phone company wanted us to leave those trees in Charlotte so we planted new Katie and Mary trees....and added a Chip tree in Greensboro, NC. And kept making pictures. Kept watching all of them grow.
One day, the phone company wanted to plant trees in Georgia so we relocated to Watkinsville. The Katie and Mary and Chip trees are growing strong. We've even added a Betsy tree. When I pull into my driveway, especially this time of year, I see each of those gorgeous maples and thank God...for those trees....for those kids.....for that sentimental husband.
Those trees keep growing. (Pretty funny that the Chip tree has outgrown the other three!) And as they grow, they need our nurturing less and less. But we get to keep enjoying them. Admiring their beauty. Watching them change. And eventually, they'll be big enough to give us some good shade. Trees. Parenting.
Oh, and for the record, I hope the phone company doesn't want us to plant trees anywhere else. These maples would really miss me.
When we brought Katie, our firstborn, home from the hospital, Paul made a trip to the nursery. But not upstairs to her room - he went to the other kind, you know, where you get trees. He bought a little sapling of his most favorite kind of tree - sugar maple - and cut it to the exact length that Katie measured on the day she made her entrance at Piedmont Hospital. (Actually, he bought TWO of them because he knew I would suffer a fit of apoplexy if the tree died. So we had "the Katie Tree"....and backup....he is a very wise husband...just sayin...)
Three years later, Paul made another nursery trip to purchase a Mary tree (OK, he got two of them again. I still haven't changed.) We loved those trees. We made pictures of the girls on their birthdays beside the trees, watching all of them grow.
And then we had to leave the Katie and Mary trees. The phone company wanted Paul in NC and he felt that would be too long a commute. I thought we should uproot those maples and take them with us but he felt they should stay. Sort of our contribution to the ecosystem, I guess. A group of very loving and amazingly thoughtful friends from church supplied us with a gift certificate to a nursery in Charlotte....to buy new Katie and Mary trees. And that's exactly what we did.
After a couple of years of watering and fertilizing, the phone company wanted us to leave those trees in Charlotte so we planted new Katie and Mary trees....and added a Chip tree in Greensboro, NC. And kept making pictures. Kept watching all of them grow.
One day, the phone company wanted to plant trees in Georgia so we relocated to Watkinsville. The Katie and Mary and Chip trees are growing strong. We've even added a Betsy tree. When I pull into my driveway, especially this time of year, I see each of those gorgeous maples and thank God...for those trees....for those kids.....for that sentimental husband.
Those trees keep growing. (Pretty funny that the Chip tree has outgrown the other three!) And as they grow, they need our nurturing less and less. But we get to keep enjoying them. Admiring their beauty. Watching them change. And eventually, they'll be big enough to give us some good shade. Trees. Parenting.
Oh, and for the record, I hope the phone company doesn't want us to plant trees anywhere else. These maples would really miss me.