Category: Personal Enrichment

The Lesson of the Mulberry Tree

 

When I was growing up in a small town in rural Ohio, in our side yard we had a large Mulberry tree. It served many purposes, but the most important one was that it was first base in our little side yard baseball field. After hitting the wiffle ball, we would race beneath its sheltering branches for safety.

As important as it was to our passions of playing ball, it was later to reveal to us some lessons of life that we did not learn within the game of  baseball.

The mulberry tree was a large tree which generated an abundant amount of shade in the heat of summer time. Later, it would yield large blackberry-like fruits that were much larger than blackberries, promising the richness of even larger sweet berries to be enjoyed.

These large, juicy berries promised all the joys of desire… juiciness, sweetness, abundance… for the tree was loaded with these berries in autumn.

As children, our Grandma Maugel, would go out to her fence row and pick blackberries for us to enjoy. Though sweet, these were small, sometimes seedy, and not anywhere near as enticing as these large juicy mulberry fruits, though they may have looked similar.

In some ways, it was a rite of passage in our family, to introduce the younger members to their first taste of mulberries. Having been raised on my grandmother’s sweet and delicious backberries, these mulberries looked to one like “super berries”… certainly larger and juicier than blackberries. 

So it was that we would place a small bowl full of mulberries in a dish and add a little milk. Everyone would stand around to watch the youngest member of the family dig in with a full mouthful of mulberries with the expectancy of a explosion of sweetness and juiciness.

But mulberries have a personality of their very own. They can be very tart and sour, despite looking sumptuous. Much laughter was enjoyed by the family as they witnessed the younger member wrinkling up their face in surprise with the sourness and tartness of the mulberries. For some that was the last taste of mulberries in their entire life!

Nature has a way of teaching us life lessons. Those things which are small and unattractive can be the sweetest and most nourishing of all. To the contrast, those things which are the largest and most promising, can result in the most disappointing and unforeseen harsh consequences.

Many philosophers and sages have expressed their opinions of life, it’s attractions, and it’s consequences. But I would say that none more eloquently than the lesson of the Mulberry tree.

LEM

The Gift of the Magi

The Gift of the Magi

An old short story we always read at Christmas time as a family tradition is called “The Gift of the Magi” and was written by O’Henry on December 10, 1905. In the story, Christmas is rapidly approaching and Jim and Della both struggle with buying a gift for the other person, each with very little money. Jim deeply loves his wife, Della, and badly wants to purchase the lovely combs for Della’s long flowing hair that she has been admiring in a nearby storefront window. Della loves her Jim just as deeply and desires to buy the perfect gift of a gold chain for the gold pocket watch that he prizes so greatly. O’Henry concludes his story with these words,

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and set on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. When she heard his step on the stairway down on the first flight, she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things and now she whispered, “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only 22- and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that particular expression on his face.
Della wiggled off the table and went for him.
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow again -you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say ‘Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice- what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”
“You’ve cut off your hair? asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”
Jim looked around the room curiously.
“You say you’re hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you- sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with the sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della…
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it up on the table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.” White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick, feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay the Combs- the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims- just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone. But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say, “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seem to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
“Is it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under back of his head and smiled.
“Dell,” he said, let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em a while. They’re too nice to use just at this present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”
The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi.