It’s like the tree of life is right outside my window, but stark and altered. Forgive me, but I never liked that book “The Giving Tree”. I never got it – the tree gives everything and ends up a stump because of the boy’s selfishness.

Several weeks ago, the man who owns my favorite restaurant in town – my second home – collapsed on the line. He has recovered from a heart incident – not an attack – and came in the other night to say hello. He’s 68. He looks great, but, y’know, his restaurant days are over.

His son is now managing the restaurant, and he is a good friend, as it goes. He told me about giving the book “The Giving Tree” to his father, a few years ago, and how his father said, in his inimitable Italian accent “Gianni, I feel like that tree. You know, the book tree.” a week before he collapsed.

There is such thing as asking too much from a person, or a tree, or a community.

I have been collapsing under the pressure of selling my Mother’s house, which isn’t that difficult, really, in terms of how hard things can be. But I have not seen my family since Thanksgiving, and every time plans got cancelled – two days before the anniversary of our mother’s death, just before her birthday on Christmas Eve, a few days after Christmas – I found my downward spiral into grief much less tolerable. I think I expected one of those metal things you put in the drain so I could head down the drain but get caught, metaphorically. Although, when it gets bad, it really feels like a CGI version of yourself. I wonder how to continue this metaphor – all the booze and blame and heartache can go down the drain. But the stuff that gets caught is, um, the chunky stuff, see…it is a bad analogy.

I remember my mother cleaning out the drain in various houses. She had old hands – her arthritis, which I have inherited, took over her knuckles, but she never shied away from a clogged drain or a vomiting person or a bloody wound. Mostly, that was not me or my brothers, as they were away and I didn’t live with her, but I understand that she, as a dorm director and teacher, was giving to girls who needed her as a parent.

I bled under different rules, and I know she cared.

I have had my share of clogged things. Sometimes my Mom and I could compare notes, she from a different perspective. Me from: “What should I do, what should I do?” and my Mom from this vast knowledge that should have been tapped more often. She would say: “Vinegar and baking soda.” Or “Listen, you can only do your best.” And now that is enough.

My parents were not good parents. My mother tried, but there was no making up for it, although I see her hands in my hands, her efforts in me, her daughter, most of all.

Why should the tree give its life to such a selfish boy?

To me, my mother remained and grew from the things that hurt her, and grew to know how she had hurt us, and she ended up with a magnificent garden. I think she knew that she had failed as a parent, and that, in her way, she tried through teaching and then volunteering – and always by gardening. – to support and value new growth. I think that she wanted to say something important through her gardens.

She taught me many things in her last years.

So, since Gianni gave “The Giving Tree” to his father and is now, with his wife, preparing for his first child, I will give that book to them…maybe there is something there that I have missed.

I’m also going to give them a tree.