The perfect tree
Jennifer Tyger
Camas
According to answers.yahoo.com, perfect means something that is as good as it could possibly be.
Every year my husband and I ask each other if this is the year we get an artificial tree. After all, they are perfect. And each year our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters ask us to go out and cut a tree down.
We always decide this is not the year and head out to the tree farm with them. Of course, they laugh at us because we just cruise the ends of the rows and find a tree. One year we even took a discarded tree that someone cut down and left.
This year was no different, except that they asked us to go with them a little farther and we would find the “perfect tree” like they were going to get.
We walked along chatting, and they told of the memories of our tree selection, the chubby tree that was bigger around then tall, the one with the empty side, and of course they brought up the discarded one.
But then, as a teacher, I thought of my former students. Not one was perfect. They all came in September with imperfections, but it wasn’t what one focused on, but what they were to become.
You envisioned the possibilities of what they could be, perfect. As the classroom year passed by, they did become perfect in my eyes.
Rough edges smoothed and loose ends made straight.
You see, just like our perfect tree this year with the crooked top, it was what we envisioned it would become. As I finish decorating our tree, I stepped back and thought to myself, yes the perfect tree just like each of my students had become.
