The oak was planted one spring morning, and there it stood in the front yard of a new house in a new neighborhood. No more moving from nursery to nursery to store to store awaiting removal from the pot it had spent it's life in.
The man proudly presented the new addition to the yard to his family. His wife was less than impressed and asked if something that scrawny could survive. The children fell in love with the tree and called it Red, because its leaves were turning red.
It dropped its leaves for the fall, all ten of them. The boy and girl who lived in the house raked all ten leaves together and jumped on them, shouting and running in circles around the tree.
The children cried the next day when a strong wind blew the leaves away. During winter the children built a snow fort by the tree and also a snowman.
Winter passed, and soon spring brought more leaves and a slightly thicker trunk. The street never filled with houses, rather the lots meant for houses grew wild grasses instead. Summer passed and so the seasons came and went and the tree went largely unnoticed growing and adding shade to the yard of the slowly aging house.
One day the boy sat under the tree in a dark graduation gown, thumbing through a freshly signed yearbook. He left the next day for boot camp, suite cases in hand. He never returned.
That autumn, the father who planted the tree took notice of it again and pruned its lower branches off and built a bench under its shady branches. The daughter, now a teenager took to sitting on the bench to read. She read a lot.
One day the girl had her graduation picture taken next to the tree, and several years later she had her wedding under that same tree, next to the bench. More seasons passed and the man who had planted the tree was sitting on the bench alone staring down the street.
Now and then the daughter came to visit with her daughter. The granddaughter would climb on to the bench next to the aging man to listen to stories he would tell. All three generations would sit together under the tree and enjoy the evening breeze.
Years passed and the tree soon enough shaded the house as well as the yard. Then one day the granddaughter took the man who had planted the tree away. They never returned. No one sat under the tree anymore.
The house never sold and slowly crumbled back to the ground as did the bench. All that was left where fields and the tree and a mostly crumbled road.
One day a man and woman came walking down the remains of the road, and spread a blanket under the tree. They ate a picnic lunch there in the afternoon shade of the old tree. Finally after the food was put away, the man turned to the woman and fell to one knee and lifted a ring in front of him.
The woman said "Yes" under the massive tree. They embraced, and spoke for some time while laying under the tree on their blanket.
The man said, "Strange to think of it."
"What is?" The woman asked.
"What do you think this tree is doing out here in the middle of this field?"
"I suppose it just grew here."
"Yeah, ... I guess," the man said and got up and they left in the direction they had come from.