The Christmas Tree Read Online Free PDF

interfere with the relationship between owners and their trees, no matter how tempting it is.
    Many times, though, I felt the urge to talk to her. I didn’t understand what it was, exactly, that drew me to her. I had plenty of people to talk plants with, and her cloistered life didn’t seem to have anything in common with mine. I am a happy city boy. I may complain, like everyone else, about the noise and the inconvenience and the dirt, but I also love the possibility in it all. New York suits someone like me, who’s congenitally unsettled. Orphans and nuns were not on my agenda.
    I decided the connection I felt with Sister Anthony that day was born of fatigue and frustration. I’d just been working too hard. Brush Creek, indeed!
    Then she called. It must have been early autumn. I can’t place the date exactly. I only remember I had already found a Christmas tree for that year. I didn’t need anything from her.
    She was teaching a nature class and wanted to know if I would come and tell the children about how I find the Rockefeller Christmas tree. She was friendly on the phone, though slightly formal.
    I could have made up an excuse. I usually do. But something, I didn’t know what, made me say yes.
    â„ ❄ ❄
    I found her in the clearing, surrounded by a group of young children, who were maybe eight or nine years old. I stood at the edge and watched as she handed them pieces of colored paper.
    â€œYou’re the sycamore group,” she was saying to the children holding red sheets, when she noticed me.
    â€œHello,” she said, waving me over. Her cheeks were bright from the nip in the air. “Let me finish up with this and I’ll turn them over to you. Do you have some time? If you don’t, I can do this later.”
    I told her to go ahead. I had nothing else planned for the afternoon.
    She had divided the class into kinds of trees, grouped by the color of the paper they’d been given. On each sheet she’d drawn a likeness of the bark, the fruit or seed, the twig, and the leaf of each kind of tree. The children were supposed to find examples and bring them in the next time they met.
    I felt nervous as I watched their enthusiasm. This was a tough act to follow. Yet during my little presentation they listened closely and asked questions that seemed to spring from real curiosity. I had spoken to enough school groups to know that these kids had been in the hands of a gifted teacher.
    When I was finished, they still weren’t ready to leave.
    â€œTell us a story,” one of them called out.
    Sister Anthony smiled, then with a look of mock seriousness stared up at the sky.
    â€œLet me see,” she said, “where is the sun? Do we have enough time?”
    It semed that this storytelling time was a ritual that concluded all of Sister Anthony’s nature classes, since before she had a chance to finish asking her question the children were looking upward with the same mock seriousness and yelling: “Yes!”
    â€œAll right,” said Sister Anthony, then she paused.
    â€œWould you like to hear about how I came to meet Tree?”
    There were more shouts of “yes.” But before she began, she thanked me for coming and told me I didn’t have to stay. “No, no, I’d like to hear this,” I said, despite the image of piles of unanswered telephone messages that flashed through my brain. I needed to find out what it was that had pulled me back there.
    From the opening sentence, I could see the kids were willing to go wherever her story would take them. And so was I.
    â„ ❄ ❄
    Many years ago, a little girl came to Brush Creek to live. She was all alone in the world, and her name was Anna. I was that girl.
    I had arrived after a long journey. Sister Frances—yes, she was here even then—led me up two flights of narrow stairs to my room, which was way up under the eaves. It was a tiny room, with a very big