Beneath the Trees

“Though we stand in different groves, the same wind moves through our leaves.”

For one bright year, it was just me and thee,

playing beneath the apple and pear trees.

I can still feel the grass beneath our bare feet, cool and damp with morning dew. The orchard was our world, and in it we learned the simplest form of belonging. Jennifer was only eighteen months younger than me, but in those early years, it felt like we were twins—bound together by dolls, make-believe, and endless laughter.

We were “little mothers” in more than play. When our baby brother Christopher was born, we decided he needed our care, too. I don’t think Mom ever forgave us for that afternoon—Vaseline and baby powder everywhere, our earnest hands fumbling with his diaper while Christopher wailed. We thought we were helping. She thought she’d walked into chaos. Looking back, I see both were true. Childhood, like fruit, was sweet and messy, and shorter than we ever realized.

Seasons and places change for me and thee,

we still find time to play beneath the trees.

Picking each peach and plum found at our feet,

washing, slicing, so sugar sweet to eat.

Utah’s orchard gave way to Garden Grove’s backyard, where plums and peaches replaced apples and pears. The trees changed, but their watchfulness never left us.

Fruit dropped with heavy splats onto the grass, drawing swarms of bees that hovered like tiny guardians. We shrieked and darted around them, sometimes barefoot, sometimes with juice sticky on our skin. Mom tried to keep order while we laughed and squealed, caught between delight and fear of stings.

The orchard grew fuller as our family did. From three to four to five children, our house buzzed like a hive, busy with chores and quarrels, songs and secrets. We gathered fruit that summer, the sticky juice running down our wrists, staining our clothes. The sweetness seemed endless then, as though we could eat forever and never grow full. But even sweetness ripens toward change, and time—like the seasons—moved us forward.

Ancient, the black walnut rests on the hill,

swaying and bending with each little shrill.

The rope drawn taut as we clung to the tires,

our gangly legs reached higher and higher.

Sweetness eventually ripens into change, and ours came with another move—this time to Indiana, to a countryside hill in West Lafayette. A sprawling front yard stretched before us, crowned by trees that seemed to breathe with the land. My father hung two tire swings shortly after we arrived, and the walnut tree became our kingdom. We soared high, daring one another to kick the sky, our laughter echoing across the fields.

Adolescence arrived like a storm, sharp and unrelenting. Beneath the walnut tree we dared each other to fly higher, but the thrill of soaring gave way to shouting matches. We bickered, slammed doors, nursed wounds that only siblings can give. Yet the walnut tree stood steady, watching us wrestle with ourselves and each other, its deep roots holding what we could not.

Even as we tested limits, my father was deepening his own roots—teaching at Purdue, working on his PhD in linguistics, and beginning his work as a Tolkien scholar. He became a contributing editor for Mythlore magazine, weaving words into a legacy as enduring as the trees outside. Looking back, I see how the land and the scholarship braided together: roots and branches, language and story.

For many years, it was just me and thee,

dancing and playing beneath the palm trees.

Until I found him gazing into your eyes.

We witnessed vows born of a love divine.

Eight years later, the fields of Indiana gave way to California palms, their slender shadows stretching across the threshold of my last two years of high school. Change pressed close around me—I was learning independence, forging friendships, and searching for my place.

You, Jennifer, were finding yours, too. By twenty, you had met him; by twenty-one, I stood at your side as you promised your life to his. I remember the day as luminous and tender, and for the first time, I felt what it meant to lose you—not to rivalry, but to love.

Years passed without the company of thee,

I think of you beneath my citrus trees.

Alone, you raised your four and I, my three,

who played and laughed beneath our separate trees.

Motherhood carved parallel paths: yours rooted in Utah, mine in California. Though our children laughed beneath different trees, their voices carried the echoes of ours.

In our backyard stood a massive sapota tree, two stories tall, its branches sprawling like an open hand. My kids loved nothing more than to climb to its highest canopy, hurling fruit at each other, shrieking with joy while those of us on the ground tried to dodge the flying missiles. There were tire swings, too—echoes of our Indiana walnut tree, proof that some things carry forward whether we intend them to or not.

One day, my nephew lost his grip and fell from the canopy. My youngest daughter, standing below, broke his fall—both were shaken, but miraculously unharmed. That was the day we cut the tree down, not because we didn’t love it, but because we loved them more. Still, I sometimes miss that giant tree, as though cutting it down cut away a piece of their childhood—and mine.

Another day will pass for me and thee,

one standing, one sleeping beneath the trees.

Time has carried us into separate groves. You made your home in Utah, the mountains watching over you as you raised your family. I stayed in California, where citrus still blossoms in the spring air. Our roots spread far apart, yet our branches bend toward the same sun.

Now we both have grandchildren—new little ones who will play, climb, and dream beneath their own trees. When I watch mine, I sometimes see us again: two barefoot girls beneath apple and pear trees, believing the orchard was the whole world. I wonder if you see the same when yours run laughing through Utah grass.

And I remember, too, our father. Before he retired, he planted shrubs in his yard for each of us children, watching them closely as if they carried our health within their leaves. If a plant thrived, he knew we were thriving. If it struggled, he reached out. He was The Gardener, mapping his love in roots and branches, as steady as the walnut, as enduring as the orchards of our youth.

Someday, we will both rest beneath the trees that watched us grow. Until then, I carry them as a map—apple, pear, walnut, palm, citrus, sapota—all the living witnesses of our story.

And though we stand in different orchards, I believe the same wind moves through our leaves.