Saving a Tree

Maddie, 7^th grade

“It’s just a plant!” My brother said once again, looking at me with the most annoyed expression on his face.  We were in out backyard, arguing over a small plant, a small tree, that I thought had more of a right to live than my brother. He disagreed. He had told me more than once that it was “just a tree” and there was millions more of them in the world.

We were raking leaves, but then I saw the little plant that had recently sprouted from a buckeye nut a few weeks ago. The empty nut shell was still sitting beside it, cracked and broken in half. I instantly cried a sound of delight, pointing at it and smiling. My brother came over, sneered, and tried to pull it out of the ground.

“It’s not just a plant!” I protested, “It’s a TREE! Now leave it alone!”

“We’ve got to pull it out! Otherwise it’ll grow and then there will be a huge tree right there, beside the oak. We don’t need another tree!” My brother yelled and snatched my rake from my hand.

“We could always use another tree!” I said, “they produce the oxygen we breathe, the shade we sit under, the paper we write on, the-”

“Terry, if we let this thing grow, it’ll absorb all the sun and nutrients the plants near it needs. It’ll kill them.” My brother tried to reason with me.

“Then we’ll transplant it!” I continued to argue. He groaned and shook his head.

“Let’s just ask mom,” I said, hands on my hips, “and we’ll see what she has to say.”

I marched past him, hearing his footsteps behind me. I thrust open the screen door to our house. 

“Mom!” I shouted, “MOM! WE NEED YOU!”

There was a thud from the floor above us, and then heavy footsteps came down the stairs.

“Terry, you don’t need to scream,” she said, rubbing her forehead.

“We need you,” I repeated, gesturing to Phil (my brother) and I. “I found a tree.”

“Is that what all the yelling in the back yard was about?” she asked, her eyelids halfway closed in exhaustion. I nodded quickly.

“Yep!” I said.

“Well, there are a lot of trees in the world, honey. I guess I don’t find it that unusual that you found one. But that’s just me, I suppose.”

“No, no!” I cried, stomping my foot. “I found a baby tree. It just started to grow. It’s only this big.” I held my fingers up to show her its tiny size of only four or five inches.

“Oh. Well, that’s different. Do you know what kind it is?” My mother said and straightened her back, a little more interested.

“I think it’s a buckeye, but I can’t be sure,” I started, “the nut is still sitting beside it if you-”

“Mom, come on!” Phil rudely interrupted, “Make her pull it out! It’ll grow to be too big and in the way of everything in our backyard!”

“No it won’t!” I shouted at him. And soon we were fighting again.

“Hey! Hey!” My mother cried and came down the rest of the stairs at us. “Stop!” She pushed us apart and kept a hand on both of our shoulders.

“This is crazy,” my mother said, “all over a tree!” She turned to look at me.

“I’m sorry Terry, but Phil is right. We don’t have enough room in our-”

“What?! No!” I pulled away from my mothers touch. “We can’t kill it! We should help the environment!”

“Terry, mom just said for you to pull it out, so do it.” Phil said with a smile on his face. He knew he had just won.

“NO! Mom, you can’t-” I cried, but my mother interrupted me.    

“Phil, stop it. You’re not helping things.” She knelt down and looked me in the eye. “Terry, I’m really sorry. I said we couldn’t keep it in our yard. But if you can find a place to put it where no one objects to it, then sure, let it grow. And I agree with you. We should help the environment. Just don’t, you know, murder someone to help the tree, okay?”

I smiled and then bit my lip, trying to be serious.

“Okay,” I said, “I won’t.”

“Good. Phil, go finish raking the leaves.” My mom said, kicking him spluttering out the door.

“I think I know where I want to put it,” I said, bursting with ideas.

~*~*~*~

“It’s perfect,” I said and smiled. My hands and knees were covered with dirt, but I didn’t care. My tree looked awesome.

I had found the place for my tree in the thin woods a few miles away from our house. It was a park, so there was no threat of bulldozers or construction. The tree was still very small, but it fit right with the ten-foot-tall ones around it. I had also planted some flowers around the tree and the area I planted it. It was beautiful.

“It does look good,” my mother had to agree, and she hugged me with her dirty hands covered in soil. “Just wait a few years, it’ll be huge.”  I nodded.

“Every little thing makes a difference.” I said. I picked up my shovel and gloves, and together we left the tree to grow.