Earth Day Revisited

The first Earth Day. I remember it well. My baby was two months old and I hadn't been out much. But on this day, I had help. I had been reading about Earth Day and wanted to do my small part. Our house was in a new subdivision that had been cleared of trees so I knew what my mission was. I left my little boys with Essie and headed to the nearest garden center. I didn't know much about trees beyond my leaf collection in tenth grade biology but decided on a sycamore. Its name was familiar to me from the Zacchaeus song I had sung in Sunday School, and besides, being the cheapest tree in the lot, it was the only one I could afford. I found Essie in the nursery when I got back home, the sides of her soft ample body overfilling the small rocker. She was holding Peter close and looking at him tenderly. She kept him in her arms while I went to the back yard, dug an adequate hole in the hard red clay, and proudly placed my sapling. We lived in that house only another year, but I thought about my sycamore every Earth Day, wondering if it was growing tall and strong like my sons. A couple of years ago I rode by my old house. The neighborhood was now an established one with many large leafy trees, and I could see my sycamore behind the house, towering over the split level where I brought my third baby home. I felt I had done a grand thing in 1970. (Two grand things really.) We plant for the future - don't we - for generations to come, and hope someone will reap the benefits. I hope that it cooled the house in summer and provided protection for the inhabitants, that happy children spread blankets and picnicked under those sycamore branches, and that is was home to many a baby robin. I guess that is what Earth Day is all about.