Apple Season...

Her mother spread the blanket out under the old apple tree. They had packed a picnic lunch and she helped to unload the hamper and set out the food. 

The day was perfect. Warm still but you could feel the promise of colder weather in the breeze. The sky was the brilliant crystal blue that you got in the Fall. You knew the sunset tonight would be gold and pink and spread from the western sky all the way to the east. 

They ate lunch and talked about her school and her mother's job. They talked about her grandmother and the trip she wanted to take back to Massachusetts where her family was from. They had started there and moved westward over the years. She didn't know where they had come from before they immigrated to the United States. Her grandmother would tell her, "Everywhere" when she asked. She assumed that meant nobody really knew. Someday she'd take one of those genetic tests and see what her background really was. 

Her mother stood up and stretched. She started to pack away the lunch but her mother told her to wait. "I'm just going to look for a ripe one to share. Give me a moment."

She watched her mother search the tree. "She's older and doesn't give as much fruit as she used to. We are lucky to be able to find any of her apples to eat."

"Why do you call the tree she?"

Her mother found a ripe apple and did the delicate twist and pull pick that she had been taught. Don't yank the fruit from the tree or you might damage the branch. Twist and gently pull and a ripe apple will come right into your hand. 

"Well, because this tree is a descendant of the grandmother tree and all of those trees are she."

"The grandmother tree?"

"Yes. Your grandmother. Well your many greats grandmother. Her tree. This tree comes from her tree."

"Was she from Massachusetts too?"

"She died in Massachusetts so it was the last place she was. But I don't know where she was from originally. My mother says...."

"Everywhere."

Her mother laughed, "Yes, she was from everywhere. But she died in Massachusetts and they buried her with apple seeds in her mouth."

"They what?" 

"They buried her with apple seeds in her mouth and eventually a tree grew and bore fruit. The grandmother tree. With the sweetest apples. And the tartest apples."

"How can one tree have both?"

"Are you always sweet or are you sometimes a little tart?"

"I'm a person. Not an apple tree."

"Your words are your fruit. Your actions are your fruit. You are a tree and eventually will put down your own roots."

She thought about it for awhile. She liked the idea of being like an apple tree. Her own tree. With sweet and tart apples. 

Her mother took the ripe apple she had picked and sliced it in two offering her one half. "This apple is part of your heritage. The descendent of the grandmother tree in Massachusetts, brought here by John Chapman as a favor to your grandmother, many greats ago. One of many trees that were spread across the land waiting for others to find them. The seeds she was buried with were hers from her mother and came from a tree planted in a different land at a different time."

"That's a lot of history for an apple."

Her mother nodded. "It is, Lilith Eve, a lot of history."

She took a bite of the apple and as the juice filled her mouth her eyes opened to the world. She was everywhere.