When you lift the front-most flap
of the glossy dustjacket on my copy of The
Giving Tree, the first words you see are “To Baby Boylan, from Aunt Susan
and Uncle Mark” written in faded and blotchy graphite. Less so my literary
hero, and more so my literary godfather, Shel Silverstein was the author of the
only book I owned coming out of the womb (he said, using a definite article as
if there were only one ubiquitous womb that has cornered the market on turning
out babies). Within two years of my birth, I owned every Shel Silverstein book
and poetry collection in hardback, a testament to my parents’ resolute wish
that if they should die in some tragic fire (you know, as opposed to dying in a
rather droll fire), I should be left primarily in the custody of the
Silverstinian doctrine with which they had imbued me.
As I
latently blossomed into the callous pre-teen boy with more plastic guns than paper
books, however, I revoked my claim on ol’ man Silver and he gradually morphed from
an accessible godfather to a clownish dad whom I couldn’t be caught dead
speaking to. Even “Hungry Mungry,” the larger-than-life narrative poem about a
boy who ate the tablecloth, his entire family, and then the entire earth, had
lost its firm arrest on my imagination, now occupied by camouflage cargo pants
and . . . well, pretty much just camouflage cargo pants.
But like
all superficially macho twerps, I came to love this enigmatic father of mine,
albeit late in my youth. The day my small library of Silverstein hardbacks came
tumbling off a closet shelf and full-force at my skull was one of bittersweet
reconciliation. As I fingered through the thick cardstock leaves of “The Giving
Tree” for the first time in almost a decade, I felt the stinging pressure at
the corners of my eyes that accompanies only the most trenchant emotions
experienced by any male between the ages of 14 and 32. Shel Silverstein was a
riveting storyteller who knew the power of brevity better than I ever would.
His narratives were simple and universal, yet so brilliant no one could have
formulated them but him. Though it seems some have forgotten Silverstein as
they age, I always am ready to turn to him for guidance and solace.
BABY BOYLAND
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