Peach and a pear and I love your hair

"That tree doesn't look so good."

Mom was performing her morning ritual of standing at the window in the kitchen, watching the shadows grow along the house and backyard.

"Hmm," I said, as I spun around her to put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. It had become the dance of the summer. Well, more of an unspoken race. She would finish her breakfast (coffee and yogurt) and I would finish mine, and we would see who would be able to take up the most space at the sink and, consequentially, the window. She had won this morning, so I had to find ways to do the chore without breaking her line of sight.

"That's your tree, you know." I did know. Anyone who had been around my mother for ten minutes knew that the pear tree was "my tree".

"Your dad nearly threw his back out putting it in the ground," she said wistfully. when your husband is dead do you remember even the times he got hurt doing your bidding as a fond memory. when you are increasingly mired in your own memories do you relive planting trees at the birth of each child.

"." What else did I have to do today? Saturday and, though I didn't have to work, weekends were the days that the home care nurse had . Which meant these days were up of the run-of-the-mill chores such as following my mother around to turn off the stove, trying to convince her that she had already washed that load of laundry three times, and redirecting her to the porch when she forgot that she could no longer drive.

"I nearly fell on the ground laughing when he split his pants trying to put in that by the driveway," she laughed on a soft exhale. "You know which one I mean? The one on your left as you're about halfway up?"

"." Her stories had always been hard to listen to with more than half an ear; they were the same stories that she had told my brother and I even when we were children.

"I'll never forget the others, though," she murmured. " those others." I bounced into a crouch to retrieve some detergent for the dishwasher.

"Oh?" My voice was muffled by the open cupboard doors. "Were there lots of others?"

"Oh yes. Four others. Two girls, two boys. Well, alright, two of them were too to tell, but I still think they were boys."

I over to the dishwasher door, detergent pack in my wet hand. I was too busy trying to remind myself to wash my hands before I ate next, so it took me a moment to understand what she had said.

"Wait, how do you know what they were? Are there male and female trees?" I rinsed my hands to the gentle shushing of the dishwasher. I always thought it sounded a bit like the ocean. Or what it sounds like in the womb. Isn't that what it's supposed to sound like for a baby? Like ocean waves?

I turned to face her as I dried my hands. She was staring at me blankly, her lips slightly open.

"Are there male and female trees?" she repeated. "How could anyone even tell?" I shrugged, hanging the towel back over the stove handle. It slipped off.

"I don't know. It's probably some sort of super detail in the flowers or something. But," I let out an involuntary grunt as I bent to retrieve the towel. "Didn't you say there were two girls and two boys?"

At once, she turned her face to the porcelain, emotionless face I had known in my teenage years. Her "mother is not amused" face.

"No."

"Yes you did," I said and hung the towel again. "You said there were two girls and two boys, though you weren't sure about two of them because 'too to tell'." I craned my neck to look out the window, as though I would see new trees had grown there in the minutes we'd been talking.

"How come there aren't ? Did they not take or something?" A full silence engulfed us. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, but then had to do a double take: the porcelain had cracked. I have read of people looking "stricken" and I always scoffed, because what does that even mean? The word that came to mind when I looked at her then was "stricken".

"Are you okay?" I stepped in worry, and she grasped my . Her eyes were already on the verge of overflowing with tears.

"I lost another one," she whispered, her throat bobbing as though she had something stuck in it. "I didn't even have a chance to name him. My god, we don't even know if a 'him'. Why don't any of them ever stay?" She covered her face in her hands and sobbed in a way that made me worry she wasn't getting enough air. I wrapped my arms around her. She had had flashbacks before, but they had never made her cry like this. Hell, they'd never even made her cry, period.

"," I soothed, doing my best impersonation of those ocean waves. "Don't worry. I'm sure one of them will stay soon." She gulped down a breath while I rubbed her back. I had no idea what she was even talking about, but I had learned that going with it was the best way to shorten them. She shook her head.

"John says he c-can't keep doing this. He says it's not fair to us or the b-babies." I froze as she gasped and wept in my arms.

Babies. Miscarriages. Dad had once mentioned something to us when we were kids about being lucky to have us because mom had had so miscarriages. I was an thirteen year old and had rolled my eyes at my sappy father. My father, who had always treated us like jewels. My mother, who had always treated us as though we would break.

"He went out and p-pulled them all out. Now we don't even h-have the trees to remind us. What if we forget about them? They were our babies!" I started to cry too, then. She had never forgotten. She could never forget. And I had never even known about them. That we had once shared the same blood, the same shelter.

I held her as she cried. She continued to cry as I laid her down in bed and shut the door. I assume she still cried even while I sat on the porch and watched the wind in the crab apple by the driveway.

When she woke up an hour later, she had either forgotten or was going to pretend that she had, because she was the same she'd always seemed to be: ready. For anything. I interrupted her expression of annoyance at herself.

"Mom, will you go get your sunglasses and a light jacket?"

"What? Why?" I held her hand as I walked her toward the front door.

"Because we're going to take a shopping trip to the nursery."