If Only Pear Could Talk

A big beautiful spreading pear proudly stood in the middle of the family backyard. It was not the only fruit tree there, there were also apple, mulberry and tart cherry trees. It was not the oldest in the family’s little orchard, that would be the two mulberries, but the pear tree was the biggest and obviously the most valuable as it sat right in the center, providing shade for a big part of the backyard. It had been planted by the patriarch of the family, a father of two girls at the time, in 1951, to celebrate finishing the construction of the main house on his little farm. In more than 40 years of its existence, the pear tree saw a lot of the family life and the way the village changed.

The pear was growing together with the younger girl of the family, a tomboy who liked playing with the neighborhood boys and get herself into a lot of mischief. She loved climbing the old mulberry tree where she would sit for hours, eating the sweet juicy berries until her tummy started to hurt. The girl also liked talking to the young tree and called it Pear, which quite accidentally was a female name in her native language. If only the girl knew that Pear could hear and understand her! The girl attempted to climb Pear when no one could see her, as if trying out the tree’s agility and viability. However, Pear was too young to hold the girl’s weight and once when caught, the girl took a lot of scolding from her mother. “I’m not going to put your bones back together when you fall and break them! And that poor little tree will break as well!” the mother yelled, carrying her big belly around. She had two more sons, when the girl was about 10 and 15.

Pear was so healthy and robust that already in the third spring it bore fruit: small perfectly shaped sweet juicy pears, yellow and red when ripe. They grew in clusters on the branches’ ends, making them heavy and easier to pick because the branches were willowing down under the fruit’s weight. As the father of the family took care of the fruit trees by whitewashing their trunks at the base and spraying them with something in early spring that killed the bugs and worms, the fruits were almost never rotten or wormed from inside. The kids were delighted to pick them and then help their mother to cut them into slices for jams and dried fruit to eat in the winter. Their favorite was the fruit paste that the mother made by combining ground apples and pears, rolling them into thin rounds, drying them and then rolling them into tubes. Sweet and chewy joy!

With every year that the pear grew it produced more and more fruit, and the family was happy to pick them, preserve them in different ways and share them with neighbors. When the tree turned 20, the younger daughter, who was a beautiful young woman now, brought home her own little daughter, a fussy and crying little creature. They stayed for several months until it became warm in the spring and went back to the city where the woman’s husband was. As she was growing up, the new little girl was sent to her grandparents’ place for the summer break from school. She was the oldest grandchild, and six more came after her almost every two years. The little girl was just as mischievous and crafty as her mother was, and Pear was happy that it could now provide the climbing rescue for her. Just like her mother, the girl could sit in the tree for hours, eating the fruit and chatting with Pear. She was quite a story teller, that little girl, with vivid imagination and an ability to weave a tale about anything she looked at: the Sun, clouds, trees, plants, birds and animals, giving them all voice and soul. Pear was surprised by how perceptive the little girl was and wished it could talk back to her.

One year, when the little girl was about eight, Pear decided to take a break from fruit-bearing. It bloomed in the spring as usual, but the flowers did not turn into fruit. “Barren bloom,” the grandmother explained to the little girl, “It happens sometimes. Everyone, even trees, needs some rest.” The family greatly missed the pears that year but decided they couldn’t do anything about it and were content with having the cherries, apples and mulberries. They also had a lot of raspberries that the little girl was happy to pick.

But Pear quite liked the lightness of her fruitless being and decided to take the break next year as well. “Barren bloom again,” the grandfather was saying, quite concerned. “Perhaps, it’s just its time, the pear is getting too old or rotting from inside.”

The grandmother wouldn’t have it. She took a big axe the grandfather kept on their farm, called her granddaughter, went around the tree with the axe three times as if sizing it up and made a move as if she was going to chop Pear off with one blow. The tree of course knew it was too big now and couldn’t be taken down with just one blow, so it was quite amused. The granddaughter, however, was very scared. She watched her grandmother with her big eyes wide open in horror, covering her mouth with the palm of her hand in shock, trying not to cry. The grandmother looked at the girl and said, “You talk to Pear and she understands you. Tell her that if she doesn’t bear fruit next year I will take her down personally and plant a new one! I don’t need barren trees in my orchard!” After the grandmother left, the girl hugged the tree and started to cry, saying, “Pear, please, have some fruit next year, even if it’s just a little bit! You know my grandmother, she always keeps her word! I don’t want you to die!”

Pear was touched by how scared the girl was. She had never experienced that much love from one human, she thought they only liked her for the fruit. But the little girl was something else, she really cared that the tree continued to live. Next year, Pear produced the biggest yield in her entire life, just to please the little girl. The whole family was thrilled to have the juicy pears again, and shared them with everyone who would care to take them.

Then the little girl grew as well and started to skip the summers or came only for a short period of time. She still liked sitting under Pear in the shade but rarely climbed it. She also didn’t talk to it that much now, and when she did she made sure no one was around to hear. “Too grown up now,” Pear thought, “afraid that the family members would laugh at her for talking to the trees.”

One year, the girl did not come at all. And the next year again. From other family members Pear knew she went to some place called “college.” Pear still hoped she would come back one day. And when she did, she started to spend only about two weeks at her grandparents’ in the summer and Pear was always happy to see her.

And then one day everything changed. It was the year Pear turned 42, and was mature and happily fruiting every year. The grandfather still worked the farm and one day when he was weeding potatoes he fell on the draw hoe’s handle and broke two ribs that damaged his right lung. He made it back to the house but the next day he felt so bad he had to be taken to the hospital. He wasn’t back for a long time, and when he did come back he was frail and thin and couldn’t work on the farm anymore. His four children and seven grandchildren all descended on the house one day, helped pack everything up and moved the grandparents to the city. They sold the house and the farm to another family.

That family did not like the trees at all. They never picked or preserved any fruit, and all the pears, apples, and cherries fell on the ground, rotting there. There were not enough wild birds to get to them and the family did not keep any chicken, ducks, or pigs like the family before did. In the first three years, the new family took down all of the poplar trees with the brush under them. They were growing around the farm’s boundaries on three sides behind the main house, making up the farm’s natural fence. The new family had a lot of young men in it who took the trees down with the axes, chopped them up and stored the logs in big stacks in the shed. In the winter, they would take the logs to the house and never bring them back. When all the poplar trees were gone, they cut the two old mulberry trees. In a year or two, the apple and cherry trees were gone and Pear found itself alone in the middle of the farm that was transformed from a small crop farm to one big sheepfold. Pear was tired, feeling old and lonely. It missed the old family dearly. It was also quite puzzled by why it was still standing. The new family put the asphalt everywhere on the ground so that they could drive the sheep easier in and out. But Pear was still sticking out in the middle.

And then one day, the father of the new family and his two oldest sons came to Pear with axes. “I’m sorry,” the father said, “Even though I gave that young woman my word, I have to take you down. You are in the way.” As Pear was feeling the hard axe blows on its trunk, it thought of the little girl who was so shocked by the threat of Pear being axed she must have made the new family promise to keep it. That thought warmed Pear’s heart as it was going to tree’s Heaven. “I had a good life,” Pear sent the last thought to her favorite girl, “I wish I could tell you that.”