Drawing a Tree

I don't recall what year it was in grammar school when we were taught to draw a tree. We were told this was significant, advanced. No longer finger painters and stick figure simpletons, this was a lesson in realism and growth. Instructed to make a trunk from two straight lines, an inch or so apart and within this rooted width we made a vee. Two from one and four from that, the limbs reached in to stretch outward and up. It wasn't until years later that the word heliotropism was explained. But in that sunny artroom, where we wore out father's tattered blue shirts backwards, a group of children became artists, thinkers, and world watchers. Because of a tree made of vees.