Wishtree

by Katherine Applegate

Trees have a rather complicated relationship

with people, after all. One minute you’re hugging us. The next minute you’re turning us into tables and tongue depressors.

Nonetheless, if you find yourself standing near a particularly friendly-looking tree on a particularly lucky-feeling day, it can’t hurt to listen up.

think Bongo is too pessimistic for such a young bird. Bongo thinks I’m too optimistic for such an old tree.

It is also evidence that trees have far more interesting lives than you sometimes give us credit for.

Hollows are proof that something bad can become something good with enough time

and care and hope.

Making others feel safe is a fine way to spend your days.

Samar has the look of someone who has seen too much. Someone who wants the world to quiet itself.

Samar, every spring night, reminded me there is beauty in stillness and grace in acceptance.

Only one percent of a fully grown tree is actually alive at any one time.

I wouldn’t trade a single rootlet for any of it. It is a great gift indeed to love who you are.

Different languages, different food, different customs. That’s our neighborhood: wild and tangled and colorful. Like the best kind of garden.

I wondered, too, if I’d done enough for the world I loved.

I wanted to tell them that friendship doesn’t have to be hard. That sometimes we let the world make it hard.

Because as each child, as each neighbor, as each stranger, placed a wish upon me, they looked at Samar and her parents and said the same thing: “STAY.”

“It’s a miracle we kept it a secret from you.”

Still, if you find yourself standing near a particularly friendly-looking tree on a particularly lucky-feeling day, it can’t hurt to listen up.