“Clara, please,” Brenda Vance sobbed into the receiver. “The bank is calling about our mortgage. We could lose our home. Greg was wrong, but please…”

I stood in my kitchen, looking out the window at the raw, pale stump sitting in the dirt.

“He should have thought about that before he started the chainsaw, Brenda,” I said.

My hand was shaking so hard the copper watering can rattled against the Formica counter.

I hung up the phone and looked out at the empty yard.

Let me back up.

Arthur and I bought our small home on Lakeshore Drive back in 1985.

The week we brought our first child, Leo, home from the hospital in 1986, Arthur walked into the house with a tiny oak sapling.

He had found it growing near the edge of the local shipyard where he worked.

“It’s going to grow with him, Clara,” Arthur said.

He bought a copper watering can from the hardware store, and that watering can became a fixture of our Saturdays.

It was a beautiful can, heavy and bright, though over the decades it developed a rich green patina from the well water.

Watering the tree became a weekly ritual for my husband.

Every Saturday morning, after we finished our breakfast, Arthur would fill the copper can at the side spigot.

He would walk out to the property line where the little sapling stood.

He would pour the water slowly around the base, checking the leaves and talking to the tiny tree.

I watched him from the kitchen window, smiling at how serious he was about this small piece of nature.

For 35 years, Arthur watered that tree every single weekend.

We watched it grow from a fragile twig into a massive, shading canopy.

It became a giant white oak, its trunk growing thick and strong, its branches reaching wide.

The oak tree sheltered our home from the hot summer sun, keeping our porch cool during the humid July afternoons.

When Leo was 5, Arthur hung a simple wooden swing from the lowest thick branch.

We spent our summer evenings sitting on the porch, listening to the lake wind rustle the leaves.

The swing was where Leo spent his afternoons, giggling as Arthur pushed him higher and higher.