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.

I am an optimist. I prefer to take the long view on life. Old as I am, I’ve seen both good and bad. But I’ve seen far more good than bad.

Hollows are proof that something bad can become something good with enough time and care and hope.

Being a home to others isn’t always easy. Sometimes I feel like an apartment complex with too many residents.

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

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

Days have a way of slipping past like raindrops in a river.

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

But that is how it is when you love life. And I could accept that if my time had come, it had come. After a life as fine as mine, who was I to complain?

I wondered, too, if I’d done enough for the world I loved. It was something I’d asked myself before. But impending death has a way of focusing your attention.

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