The Wishing Tree is a pine tree festooned with trolls beside which stands a blackboard where passersby can write their wishes. When I first created it, a group of teenagers was the first to stop by to try it out. I watched them from my upstairs balcony and after they left hurried down to see what they had written. On the board were the words, ” I wish that my family would spend more time with each other. ”
The wishes are sometimes poignant like that one, sometimes funny, sometimes silly, sometimes rude. One summer a girl of about 9 or 10 wrote every single day on the board ” I want a dog”. Her mother never relented. On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, someone wrote, “Here Here Madame President.”
