Gretel's Orchard

Sitting in her mother’s chair, a weathered, red Adirondack, Violet closes her eyes. A warm gust of wind blows across her face, stirring up the dry earth beneath the pear tree and tickling the bronze elephant windchime hanging above her head. The chimes remind her of her childhood and her little sister, Zinnia, long since passed. She stands and rakes her fingers through her bobbed, silver-blonde hair, pulling the stray strands away from her face.

Heaven is so near she can practically touch it. Her mother is gone but this place is her. Violet’s heart aches with longing, wishing to spend just one more afternoon with her, on the back porch, eating cake on a Sunday morning, as was always her habit. Cake and strong coffee, a German ritual. At least twice a month, Violet made the drive with one of her daughters to have cake with Oma…always on a Sunday.

But she’d missed the last one. When Violet called to explain, her mother had reassured her. “That’s okay, dear, there are four Sundays in every month. We’ll get together next week.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I need to do some back-to-school shopping with Molly. She needs some things for her dorm and there’s a sale at Penney’s today.”

“Don’t be silly, Violet, you go help my granddaughter. She needs you now.”

That had been their last phone call, for Gretel suffered a massive stroke later that day. Maybe if she hadn’t cancelled, if she’d been there, her mother could have been saved. At the very least, she wouldn’t have died alone.

Tires on gravel bring Violet back to the present. She sits forward and listens, wondering if she only imagined them. After a few seconds she hears car doors closing and murmuring, coming from the front of the house. She stands and follows the sound. When she rounds the corner of the house, she’s blown away. Parked in the gravel drive in front of the detached garage are a handful of trucks and at least two handfuls of people carrying baskets and ladders. A heavyset woman heads her way, crunching across the gravel in her white tennis shoes and flowered house dress.

“Hello, dear. It’s so good to see you, Violet.” She sets down the basket in her arms and pulls Violet into a hug. “I’m so sorry about your dear momma. There was none like her.”

When the woman relaxes her hug, Violet takes a step back to get a better look. “Mrs. Kerr,” she manages before her throat closes up and tears flood her eyes. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course. We’ve come to pick your momma’s pears. She would roll over in her grave if we let her prize pears go to rot. I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t have your number to call, but when Wade said he saw a car at the house, and a young woman, I figured it was you.”

With her mother’s sudden stroke, right before harvest, Violet hasn’t found the time to arrange for pickers. There’d been so many other details to manage, she’d resigned herself to letting them go to waste. Her mother would have been more than sad to see it. Gretel, who’d immigrated from Germany as a small child, had almost single-handedly managed the farm after her husband died just two years after Violet was born, leaving her with two little girls and a mortgage.

Violet crosses both hands over her chest, a mannerism she inherited from her mother. “My mother would like nothing better. I was just thinking about how much she would have hated to have them go to waste. Waste was a sin in our house.”

“That’s why we’re here. Now, let me give these folks the go ahead and you and I can sit on the back porch and talk a spell.” Without waiting for a response, Mrs. Kerr turns towards her rag tag crew. “It’s a go!” The pickers turn and head into the hundred tree orchard.

Walking back towards the rear of the house, Violet passes her mother’s prize rose garden, now parched and spotted with weeds. Guilt pricks her heart. She stops and turns towards Mrs. Kerr. “Could we spend a few minutes cleaning up this bed?”

Mrs. Kerr smiles, nodding, “Sure, dear, if you’d like.”

For nearly an hour they kneel, facing the yellow siding, plucking weeds and sharing memories. “My mother practically slept in her gardens, battling weeds with a fervor akin to warfare. Weeds were the enemy and if one dared to pop its head above ground it would be pried from its trenches by the trowel-wielding German.”

Mrs. Kerr laughs. “Yes, she put the rest of us to shame. Gardening was more than a hobby with Gretel. It was a calling.”

“My mom was as regimented as a soldier. She wasn’t afraid of hard work and expected the same from her two little sheissballes.” Violet pictures her mom in her starched white apron, hands on her hips, eyebrows pinched, her eagle eyes lasered onto some leaf or twig that had the nerve to fall where it wasn’t welcome.

Mrs. Kerr turns towards her. “Sheissballes?”

Violet smiles and continues digging. “That’s what my mom called Zinnia and I...her little sheissballes. At the time, we thought it was a term of endearment, but we eventually discovered that it meant, excuse the profanity...shit balls. Really Mom, shit balls?”

Mrs. Kerr barks out a laugh, “Oh, my...she was a character, wasn’t she?”

“She’d make us sweep the ground all around the back porch, even under the pear tree out back. She’d say, ‘You need to get outside and sweep the backyard! If those ants get a taste for pear, they’ll be marching into the house looking for more!’ Little Zinnia would argue, ‘Mother, nobody sweeps their yard!’. But Mom would say, ‘“Well, I’d like to meet Mrs. Nobody, she sounds like a smart lady!’ Then she’d turn and leave, end of discussion.”

Mrs. Kerr laughs and pushes herself up to a standing position, straining against gravity. Violet brushes off her hands and joins her, straightening her sore back. She whispers, “There you go, Mamma, just for you.”

They round the corner of the house and step up onto the painted back porch, where a solitary pear tree stands just off the corner. Potted red geraniums form a boundary along the edge. While Violet unwinds the garden hose, Mrs. Kerr finds a seat. She twists it on and waters each thirsty pot, feeling her mother smiling down on her, approvingly.

For the next three and a half hours they share goodies from Mrs. Kerr’s basket, as well as stories and “Gretelism”, as Violet likes to call them.

In one of the lulls in the conversation, Violet confesses, “My mother had a different way of saying and doing things and as a teenager it sometimes embarrassed me. It shames me to admit that. I was a stupid teenager. Why did I care so much about what everyone else thought?”

“Your mother was a strong woman, made from a grit rarely found anymore. Despite her obvious accent, the loss of her husband and first child, she’d managed to maintain this farm and orchard, earning the respect of the people in this community.”

“I know. I really miss her.”

Violet wipes away the tears pooling in her eyes and walks to the edge of the deck. She spots a loaf-shaped rock nearly buried in weeds and steps down beside it. It’s the final resting spot of Maximillian, her mother’s big, brown, goofy, fluff ball of a dog. Gretel brought him home, just a puppy. After all her years of Violet begging for a dog, her mom got one just as she was getting ready to leave for college.

Violet bends down to clear away the dry weeds, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “It’s Maxi’s grave.”

“I’m sorry dear. He was a great pup. Your mother loved him dearly.”

Violet brushes dirt off the rock, uncovering the faded white paint. “She swore that she got him to protect the hens from coyotes, but instead of spending the night outdoors, he slept every evening in the house, curled up by Mom’s feet, while the coyotes hunted.”

Mrs. Kerr added, “He was such a sweet boy, a loyal companion for your mom. Farm life in Eastern Washington can be a lonely and challenging existence for a widow. For fifteen years I imagine that Maxi made it a little less lonely."

Violet silently collects a handful of wild daisies and lays them beside the stone. “I wasn’t there when Maxi crossed the Rainbow Bridge, but Mom called me that afternoon, barely able to get out the words, ‘My sweet Maxi died’. She wasn’t one to show emotion, so I knew she needed me to come. I helped her bury him here and paint this rock.”

A few minutes later, as the sun descends towards the horizon, the pickers emerge from the orchard, carrying ladders and overflowing bushel baskets. Mrs. Kerr gathers up the dishes and puts them back into her basket. “We will all miss your momma, dear. I hope that whoever buys this place will do right by her.”

“Thank you. Before I came here today, I’d decided to let the place go, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to hold on to it. Who knows, my daughter Molly might want to utilize her agriculture degree to manage the orchard. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I’m not ready to say goodbye to it...to her.”

With the ladders and bushels stowed, the pickers converge on the back porch. Violet nods and smiles at a few familiar faces, overcome with gratitude.

When she can speak without crying, she says, “Thank you all for taking care of my mother’s pears. She would have appreciated it so much. I appreciate it, too. I’d like you each to take one of her potted Geraniums, but just leave me one. My mother loved her red Geraniums, and I want you to have one to remember her by.”

Smiles brighten every face as they look at the line of pots. “They're not in the best shape right now, but they’ll bounce back with a little love and plenty of water. She’d want you to have them…as a thank you.”

After everyone leaves, Violet takes the brass chimes of miniature elephants along with the sole remaining potted geranium. They’ll adorn her patio, reminding her of the home where she spent her childhood, but more than that, of her mother, the hardest working woman she’d ever known. Her mother is gone, and so is her sister and old Maxi, but they live on in her mom’s place, as does she. How could she seriously consider selling her mother’s legacy? It makes financial sense to put it on the market instead of letting it sit empty, but there’s more to life than figures on a balance sheet and honoring her mother’s memory is one of those things.