The Pear Tree

Ron

“I have it now – my own farm. I am working for myself – not my father or my older brothers, but myself. And of course for my wife Diana and our child-to-be. I’m sad, sure, that Granddad died, but the money that he left me gave me enough for a down payment on this farm.

           And I’m going to make it like no other farm in the area. People, especially my family members, are always saying ‘Ronnie has his own mind. He always does things his own way.’. I don’t think that is meant as a compliment, but I don’t care. I will put my signature on this place. I will grow something here that no one else around does. What will that be?”

The answer to Ron’s question would soon come – over his first dinner at their new place. They weren’t completely moved in yet. Their food for dinner came all from cans. When Lannie, his wife, opened up a can for their dessert, Ron got a whiff of a good, sweet smell. He looked inside and saw pears there, something he hadn’t eaten since he was a boy. His father had hated pears, claiming that he was allergic to them.

Halfway through slurping down this special treat, Ron made a decision, and announced it as if he were on stage: “We’re going to grow pears on our farm.” 

Later that night, after some intense research on ‘farmer Google,’ Ron discovered where he could obtain pear seeds, and decided what kind of pears to grow – Moonglow. The trees matured faster than with most other pears, and he liked the name. It would be a long drive, with Ron and his pregnant wife taking a day to get to the place, a day to look at the mature Moonglows, and another day to return home with the seeds. He was ‘over the moon’, to use his own phrase.

Now, while Ron would have the ‘ordinary’ as the rest of his farming choices – the wheat, the chickens, the hay and the milk cows, the pear trees were his babies, particularly the one closest to the house, which was the first one that he planted, a real symbol for him of his independence of thought. The planting of that tree was performed with ceremony akin to that of a religious ritual.

Peter

And speaking of babies, his wife Lannie soon afterwards gave birth to their first child, a boy they named ‘Peter’. The boy and the pear tree grew up apace. It was like they were brothers of different mothers, but definitely of the same father. You didn’t have to ask where Peter was most of the time if he wasn’t indoors. He had climbed up into ‘his tree’, sitting or hanging upside down from one of the stronger limbs that was his favourite. As he did so, he became quite fit. He didn’t need exercise equipment. Peter had his pear tree. 

When he was old enough, he did all the picking of the pears on all of the trees. He didn’t so much care about what happened with the wheat, the chickens, the hay, or the milk cows. The trees, and eventually the ‘pear business’ became his responsibility. As his parents aged, they decided to move to a ‘retirement living’ building in town, the pear trees became the sole providers of the income of the farm, as well as serving up some wonderful desserts for family and friends.

Lisa

Peter married a woman, Paula, that he liked to say was ‘pear shaped.’ This was pretty much a compliment coming from him, but it was not ever said to her face or in her obvious presence. Their first child was a girl that they named ‘Lisa’. Peter wanted to call her ‘Pierrette’ as it was the closest female name to ‘pear’ that he could think of, but Paula would have none of it.

As she grew up, like her father, she spent a lot of time in his and her favourite pear tree. 

She soon became known as ‘the creative one’ in the family. That began when, at seven years’ old, in a pottery session with her mother and other women helping her, she created a clay bird that she dubbed a ‘partridge’. After painting it the appropriate colours of brown, gray and white, she attached it to her favourite pear tree. She sang a lot about it around Christmas time, and took pictures with which she made Christmas cards.

           But art was not her main creative venture, writing was. Lisa began to write children’s stories. She did so with a pad of paper and pen while sitting in the pear tree.  She had two good reasons for doing this. One was that the place where she felt the most comfortable. The other was that the main character in the stories that she wrote was “Paul the Pear Tree”. She would sketch out her story there, in order to get what she called a ‘tree’s eye view’ of what Paul could see.

           By the time that she was 17 years old, her books became best-sellers in the children’s literature genre. It was not long before the family profited from that. Lisa, and her younger brother and sister would give tours of ‘Paul and his Pear Tree Friends’ that were well attended.

           Eventually, Lisa would inherit the farm from his parents, who like Peter’s parents, had moved to retirement living, in the same home Ron and Diana had lived in. They knew the place well from years of visiting Peter’s parents, taking pears to give to them.

Lisa would eventually marry her illustrator Ralph, who was really good at drawing trees. He had spent plenty of time in the pear orchard before they had got involved romantically. They had one son, Kenny

Kenny

Kenny was the fourth generation of the family to fall in love with Paul the Pear Tree. He had been raised with his mother’s stories and his father’s illustrations.

It was good that he did so. One day, an out-of-control grass fire from a neighbouring farm spread to the orchard. Kenny could smell wood burning. When his mother called the fire department, Kenny took out the hose and sprayed Paul and the trees around him. In so doing, he saved that one special tree, that had given him memories of his mother, grandfather, and great grandfather.