When I read Sue's awesome tree story, it reminded me of something Anne Lamott says in her book "Bird by Bird." She is talking about reasons to write. "You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and giving is going to have to be its own reward."
I think that's what Sue did here. She was out at the park for a fun afternoon, ran across this odd tree and listened to her broccoli (if you don't understand, read the book). She wrote a powerful story about a tree because she had to. She didn't know if it would be published or not. And, honestly, that didn't even matter to her at the time. The reward was in the writing itself. She wrote the story because she had to write the story. She had no choice. And it's a story that's about so much more than a tree. It's about life -- good and bad, happy and sad. It's about all of us having a need to leave a part of ourselves behind, a mark that says "We were here."
No comments:
Post a Comment