Echoes in the Orchard

I’m five years old, and the noon sun sets my skin to prickling as I kneel in the red soil of the strawberry fields of Larriland Farm in Woodbine, MD. My sisters and my mother crouch nearby, busily filling their baskets as telltale streaks of juice dry on their chins. I lean forward to uncover a bunch of heavy, ripe strawberries from their green leafy bower and exhale in awe. Unable to resist, I pick the biggest one and pop it in my mouth, delighting in the explosion of fresh strawberry juice on my tongue.

I’m nine years old, and I gingerly hold the pruning knife in careful fingers, eager to prove how responsible I am. I pull back the deep green leaves of the broccoli plant and carefully saw at the thick base until the abundant bunch comes free. I show my harvest to my mother, who smiles and gathers it into her basket, saying, “I knew I could trust you with the pruning knife this year.” I glow with pride and think in anticipation of tonight’s dinner. There’s nothing like Larriland broccoli with smoked ham and macaroni and cheese.

I’m eleven years old, sweating and breathless from chasing my little sister through the hay bale maze at Larriland. Greedily, all three of us down bottles of apple cider and suck on honey sticks as we sit in the back of our mother’s 1989 Volvo station wagon as it toils slowly down the dirt road with the back open. Our feet disappear in swirls of dust and we laugh as we compare flavors of homemade fudge from the barn market. In less than five minutes, we arrive at the pumpkin patch, and I jump off the car to begin my quest for the fattest, roundest, and orange-est pumpkin I can find.

Lizzy is seven months old and riding in the Ergobaby as we pose for pictures before the giant pumpkins that line the bridge leading to the market barn. A cluster of honeysuckle rampages across a rickety fence bordered by Styrofoam ghosts that were already old when I visited here as a child. We stop to smell the honeysuckle, and Lizzy burbles in glee as the nearby llama emits a bleating hello. The sun has set Larriland’s two-acre lake to sparkling and Lizzy’s eyes to glowing with a blue fire. I perch her on a hay bale in between two mums, exploding gold and maroon, and begin to clap. In perfect unison, Lizzy giggles and claps along with me, and I snap thirty photos of her smiling in her “cutest pumpkin in the patch” onesie.

Lizzy is twenty-one months old, and she and I laugh in hilarity as we pose on haybales for my little sister’s photography. Lizzy runs fearlessly through the apple orchards of Larriland, reaching down to examine the fallen apples and crawling a safari through the sturdy line of adolescent trees. I pluck a Fuji apple from the tree and take a bite, offering the rest to Lizzy, who promptly sits down in a puddle of sunlight to gnaw at the apple, discarding pieces of skin as she goes. The laughter of my mother and sister echoes through the grove as I pick apple after apple and dump them in my t-shirt to add to the family bag.

Cece is seventeen months old and giggling uncontrollably as my big sister reaches in to tickle her once again. Perched on a hay bale between two pumpkins roughly the same size as her, Cece reaches out to try and tickle my sister back, then squeals in glee as renewed tickles follow. Later, she sits drenched in sunlight with rows of apples trees stretching for acres behind her and sucks happily on her homemade pear-and-apple puree from a reusable pouch. I take a ninety-second video of her trying to mimic a deep growling sound, then splitting apart in hysterical giggles each time she manages it. My sister and I growl and giggle back at her as we crunch on Stayman apples and the sky stretches azure arms to embrace the valley which holds Larriland Farm.

Both place and time can hold a sort of magic that lures us with the promise of resurrection. We return to them again and again seeking a renewal of an experience long-cherished. Sometimes, all we can manage is a type of reincarnation, and yet we accept the substitute because it holds within it a hint of what was: a near-promise of reclamation. And yet remains the stark inevitability that what is given here and now must pass away and all attempts to recall it must ultimately fail and be abandoned.

There is no going back. But when I speak to you of going forward, I do not always do so with grief in my heart. I find myself ceasing to enumerate the ways in which I would change my life, instead unfolding pages within my heart so raw and virginal, it is nearly painful to discover them.

There is no going back. There is allowing the here and hereafter to speak its beauty, its threshold, and its covenant. There is the blue firmament of sky, reflecting the exact shade of Lizzy’s eyes. There is the steady presence of my big sister, walking a stroller-full of apples by my side, knowing without speaking the oceanic grief that still consumes us both. There is my living daughter, cross-eyed and gorgeous, clapping her hands in the same apple orchard where her big sister once danced.

And there is, too, a time and a place where even grief can die and give birth to wonder.