“Thank you for what you did for us, tree,” I sniffed, watching my kids hug the huge pine tree in our yard. They were probably getting sap on their shirts, but it didn’t matter. The tree was going to be gone soon. We each told it that we would miss it, calling out “Goodbye.”

A few days later, I came home to just a filled-in hole in the yard, as if the tree was never there. But it was still in our memories.

Huge pine trees were a big part of my childhood. My neighborhood friend and I would play under the canopy in her yard, imagining it was the ceiling of a hidden world. I spent many hours hiding under the sappy boughs in my own yard, nestled in pine needles.

While we never got quite the same use out of our tree, we had a fondness for it. One year it even hosted a family of woodpeckers.

So when our city’s manager told me that they’d have to cut down our pine tree to put in a sidewalk, I was torn. Of course, I’m in favor of more sidewalks – I’m a sustainable transportation advocate.

But cutting down our pine tree didn’t seem necessary. They said they needed to because the construction would wreck the tree’s roots, making it dangerously unstable. But if it was a matter of space, why not take the street parking in front of our house instead? Even more sustainable! As I wrote a letter to the transportation manager, I explained to my older son what I was writing about. Like me, he agreed a sidewalk would be good, but certainly didn’t want our tree cut down. I hoped the situation could be a lesson in the power of speaking up and compromise.

Alas, it was not to be. Writing back, the manager said that cutting the street parking would make the intersection too narrow to be safe. While that seemed unlikely to me, I’m not a traffic engineer.

Instead, we resigned ourselves to saying goodbye to our tree. We learned that sometimes, despite your best efforts, you can’t get a win-win situation. That sometimes you do have to sacrifice for the greater good. That it’s worth participating in this grand democratic experiment even if the results aren’t what you want.

But that you can also find the opportunities and growth in such circumstances. Our blueberry bushes will now get more sun and produce more berries. We’ve planted squash next to them to take advantage of the increased sunlight.

And now, there are two new trees where the old one stood, planted by the city. Trees to hug, to play under, to celebrate. These trees have bloomed and their blossoms turned the sidewalk below them into a flood of pink.

(This was originally posted on Facebook on May 28, 2020.)