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Wouldn't Give Up
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AN OPEN LETTER TO MY GRANDHILDREN
We can all learn a lesson
from a brave little tree
of TheColumnists.com
Dear
Grandchildren
Ava, Matthew, and Samantha:
Do you think a tree can teach us a lesson?
Wait a minute. Is Grandpa losing his grip? A tree can't talk.
Read on, children.
Look at this odd-shaped, little cherry tree in the picture. It
has a big hole in its trunk. But it's alive and well. It grows
next to my house in Conway, S.C. (100 miles north of Charleston).
I stay here in the winter so my weary old bones can stay warm
when it's icy cold up in New York where you are.
But back to the cherry tree. As you can see in the photo, it
has a huge hole right in the middle of its trunk. In fact, the
hole is so big that you can put your arm right through it.
That's just what I'm doing in the picture. If you look carefully,
you can even see a car through the hole.
Ever see a tree like that? I never have. Even a tree expert like
Wanda Lilly, the arborist for the city of Conway, thought the
tree was special. "I don't think I've ever seen one survive
that has been damaged to that extent," she said.
Nobody knows what made that hole. Lightning could have struck
it. Somebody might have clobbered it with an ax. Or a car might
have plowed into it. It’s a mystery.
Many people stare at the tree as they walk by. It's been that
way for at least 20 years. Sometimes, passerbys ask how it manages
to live on year after year.
To find the answer you have to know how a tree gets its food.
You see a tree is nourished by the rain water it sucks up through
its roots.
Lilly, the tree expert, told me that the water, along with substances
called nutrients that help it grow, are broken down into a fluid
called sap. The sap runs up through tiny tubes just inside the
tree's skin, called bark, to feed the hungry leaves and branches.
But whatever created the hole also destroyed many of those tubes
that help the tree grow big and strong. The injury seemed to
make it impossible for enough sap to run upward to keep the tree
alive. Everyone thought the tree would die of starvation.
It turned out the little cherry tree fooled us all. It found
a solution. It detoured all the sap around the hole. It told
all the surviving tubes they would have to do double duty. They
would have to work harder and take over the whole job of transporting
the sap upward. And they did.
That's how the little tree got to survive even with that big
hole in its middle.
So you children might ask--what is the point of this story? The
point is the tree has a lesson for us.
It wouldn't give up. It refused to die. By getting its transportation
system to work overtime, it a found way to keep feeding its hungry
leaves and branches so they could stay healthy and live on.
Like the tree, we all have to face tough going sometimes. Whenever
that happens, think about the little cherry tree next to my house
in Conway. It wouldn’t give up on life.
So Ava, Matthew, and Samantha, here is my message to you:
If a never-say-die attitude worked for the little tree, then
one day, when things turn wrong and everything looks bad, it
can pay off for you, too.
All
my love,
Grandpa
©2009 by David Zinman. The Zinman caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted March 9, 2009.
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