You probably have fond memories of it from childhood. I know I did. But I've been mulling it over for the years since I became a mother and, you know what? Fuuuuuuuuck that.
This all came to a head when I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (which I highly recommend - I even more highly recommend another one of her novels, Sharp Objects - did I mention that I'm a book geek?). The line? "He Giving-Treed me out of existence." I prefer the term Giving-Treeing oneself as it takes a willing tree to do this. Many a tree resist. I, unfortunately, am not such a tree. It is but one of my hamartias (again, book geek).
For years, I've been using the example of the Giving Tree when I have talked with my girlfriends about motherhood and the soul-devouring nature of children. People don't talk about it. People don't talk about a lot of the things that I talk about. IDGAF.* But I feel like The Giving Tree is overtly about the relationship between mother and child. This would be fine if it ended well but it doesn't. Mr. Silverstein even seems to know that Giving Trees are not happy. In the middle of the book, when...
I feel like, "AH HA! PROGRESS!!" It seems like Mr. Silverstein is going to acknowledge the fact that one cannot have one's very core, literally one's core, removed and still be happy. This is accurate. One cannot have her very core removed, even a mother by her children, and still remain happy. But...
Then the boy returns and he is old and whiny. He bitches and moans and complains about how he can't eat apples or swing from branches or climb trunks or any such nonsense. So you know what that sweet, sacrificing "tree" (as she is no longer a tree, she is nothing but a mere stump) does. "Straightening herself up as she could," she offers the boy a place to sit. Here, Boy... You've consumed my entire being, literally and figuratively. You've eaten my apples, you've sold my apples, you've stripped me of my branches, and cut down my trunk. I have nothing left except for what bad tree excavators leave behind - garbage - but please feel free to use that, too.
And you know what the shittiest part of this fucking story is? These two pages:
And you're thinking and hoping (or at least I am thinking and hoping), "Please dear Lord, Baby Jesus, Master of the Universe, be it He-Man, She-Ra, Mother Nature, whoever, all that is good and holy (or not, whatever, IDGAF*), whatever it is that has control over the matters of us measly humans, PLEASE LET THE NEXT PAGE, THE LAST PAGE, SAY, "BUT NOT REALLY."
But it doesn't. Not really. Not really even fucking CLOSE to "not really."
THIS is what the next page/last page says:
On behalf of all mothers everywhere, or at least the ones with children who are apple-eating, branch-swinging, and/or trunk climbing... fuck you, Shel Silverstein. And fuck the rest of you that perpetuate the myth that mothers should Giving-Tree themselves to death. This is where Mother's Guilt originates. I'm over it.
*I don't give a fuck. I need this as a tattoo. It would be my first tattoo. It's in the running for that honor with a Hunger Games tattoo. I want "She has no idea. The effect she can have," scrolled around the mockingjay symbol on the top of my foot. I've been told it is excruciating to get a tattoo there. This only mildly scares me. I had three children without pain medication, with minimal medical intervention (did I tell you I was a bit crunchy, in just a few ways?). Anyway, the other reason why I've waited is that I've heard the skin on the foot is thin and prone to blurring. Not good for text. Plus text is supposed to be a fairly large size if one doesn't want it to look blurry relatively quickly.
