In our backyard, there are three Mulberry trees – one in each of the two far corners of the yard, and the third, and largest, next to our back deck. All of them provide some privacy and wonderful shade. When my husband was being treated for his most severe bout of depression, he built a tree house in the largest Mulberry tree. He told me countless times how much he’d wanted a tree house when he was a kid, but he had no yard, no trees and no parent to make that happen. The act of constructing this childhood dream was helpful for him on many levels, especially as a daily dose of exercise and vitamin D, both of which were essential to his healing.

In the spring and fall, the largest Mulberry tree was also home to my husband’s hammock, another haven, like the tree house, that he’d always dreamed of having. He aspired to hang Christmas lights in it in the winter, and dangled some beautiful glass bottles and jars from it in the summer. But, despite all the joy he got from that tree, he spent one month every year doing nothing but complain about it.

Every June, the tree would drop its berries, shades of dark purple and red, all over our deck. For whatever reason, the “mess” these berries made overshadowed all the joy this tree gave him the rest of the year. So, one day he Googled “ways to kill a tree,” thinking he could adapt one of the methods and remove the one unattractive quality in this giving tree.

Apparently, hammering a dozen copper nails into a tree will kill it. So, my husband drove one metal object into the heart of the Mulberry. He said he merely hoped to discourage its growth. Sure enough, the next June there were no dark purple and red berries on our deck. Instead, the tree dropped almost all of its leaves, while they were still green. It was a second autumn, and created as least as much of a mess as the berries. Even worse, we were left with a scraggly, unhealthy tree, that provided very little shade. Five years later, there are still entire branches with no growth on them and the berries that do appear are puny and drop while they’re still green and premature.

And yet, somehow, the tree endures.

June is just around the corner and, as I watch the first signs of life appear on the branches of our Mulberry, I’m wondering if this might be the year the berries return. I can’t help but root for this tree, considering how much we have in common.

For 21 years, my husband was thrilled with the shelter and safety I provided; with my strength – enough to withstand whatever weight he placed on my shoulders – and the space I gave him to build what he thought he always wanted. Still, despite being 11/12 of what he wanted and needed, that last 1/12 of me was always “too much” for him. And, no matter what else I gave him year round, he still felt it necessary to hammer something unnatural into the heart of me, hoping the part of me he didn’t like would eventually shrivel and die.

So, here we are, the Mulberry and I, damaged, scraggly, with some permanently leafless branches and no fruit to give this season. We’ve both more than earned our keep, so the lack of nurturing and appreciation is confusing, to say the least, but we’re blooming where we were planted, rooted too deep to move now and summer is coming. So, we’ll give what we can to whomever spends this season with us, and see what next year brings.