My family wanted to do something to honor my nephew, a Ranger with the Army’s 101st Airborne, who had been sent to Iraq. So, with the help of her four-year-old grandson, Chandler, my sister tied a yellow ribbon on the tree in her front yard. “Why are we doing this, Grandma?” Chandler asked.

“It’s for your uncle,” she said.

As he watched his grandmother attach the bow, Chandler remarked quietly, “A tree’s not much of a present.”
— Diane L. Olwin