I am in my father's house in Connecticut, sitting at a crowded table with my brother, my two sisiters and all our partners, talking about a tree. "He doesn't want it cut down." My sister says when my father has gone to bed and none of us speaks of the tree in his presence. "He says he usef to climb it when he was a boy." When I was last here, a year and a half ago, for my father's 90th birthday, Hurricane Irene drove seawater into the roads. The large tree that hangs over the houses swayed  alarmingly, but it stayed up. Last October, Hurricane Sandy acused a great deal of damage. Six months on, many of the surrounding houses are on sale, but the tree that hangs over the house still stands. "That tree," my brother says, "has survived the two worst storms of the last 100 years." Though my brother thinks highly of the amazing staying power of the tree, my sister says that the tree should never have been planted: it stops light from reaching the house. My other sister's partner says that all trees fall down eventually. There is plenty of evidence for what he says: throughout the neighborhood, the ramains of similarly sized trees lie on their sides, with their roots in the air. During this discussion, I offer to pay a quarter of whatever is required to remove the tree. "A guy I talked to," my brother says, "told me it could cost us$10,000." As night wears on, the discussion becomes increaslingly meaningless. There is no point in reaching any kind of agreement, since the decision is not for us to make. It's my father's tree, and he has refused to cut down the only thing in the neighborhood older than him. According to the text, the tree  _
is more than 90 years old has survived two storms in its life will fall down after the author's father's death is the only large tree in the neighborhood