One thing I keep thinking about the apple trees on the edge of the forest and the apple tree that had been in Peeta's backyard. So sit back (and put on this song if you'd like) for a drabble on the Everlark family apple picking.
I take a deep breath in, the air of autumn cool and invigorating as it flows into my lungs, while the afternoon sunlight bathes us in warmth. After a spring of dandelion salads and a summer of berries with cream comes my favorite season of all: apple season.
“Careful, baby!” Katniss rushes over to our son who starts climbing up the tree trunk.
“Mama, I can do it!” he protests and scrambles up higher in the branch. Katniss lets him be but keeps an eye on him, hovering near the edge of the branches.
“Daddy, my basket’s full,” Our daughter leans backwards as she totters forward with a basket full of the red and gold apples. I catch the basket wider than our girl and lift it up and away from her.
“There’s lots more up high,” our daughter says.
“I can get them!” Our son drops an apple into Katniss’s waiting apron.
“As long as you keep your feet on that tree,” Katniss says. “If you dangle like a monkey, you’ll be back on the ground.”
“You stay there,” I say. “I’ll get Mama and Daddy’s tree.”
“I’m getting the ladder for mine!” Our girl scurries to pick up the worn wooden ladder and swing it toward her tree.
“When’s mine gonna have apples?” Our boy asks.
“Any year now,” I tell him, reaching up to the highest I can to pluck from the crown of the tree. “You’ll have to be patient and wait until the tree is ready.”
“It’s not fair,” he says. “All the other trees have apples.”
“I had to wait nine years for mine!” Our daughter says, hand on her hip, the ladder perched against her apple tree.
“How long did you and Daddy have to wait, Mama?” Our son tosses two apples down at once to Katniss.
“For this first one? I think it must have been…ten years. Right, Daddy?”
“Ten years,” I confirm. I’d started sprouting the seed from some of the wild apples at the edge of the forest, but only planted the tree a year later when things between Katniss and I got settled and I moved in with her. From there, it took ten years of care before we got any fruit out of the first tree.
“What about your wedding tree?” Our daughter asks, a new basket perched on the ladder step above her and filling up with more apples.
“Eight years,” I say. “It gave fruit right along with the first one.”
“I hope mine is only eight years,” our son says. “I want apples from my tree next year!”
“Maybe you will,” Katniss says. “All you can do is wait.”
Our son groans and I hide a smile by turning my face to the rustling green leaves and small, round apples. Now in Panem, kids can’t wait to grow up and ours are no different. There’s so much to do and experience and they don’t have the patience to wait and appreciate life as it is. Now in the fifth decade of my life, I know better than to wish for any moment with my wife and children to go by faster.
As our baskets’ capacity for apples has been met, we sit down on a blanket in front of the plucked trees and eat the crisp, sweet fruit. The taste reminds me of an apple tree I used to spend my falls gathering fruit from, my brothers and I competing for who could pick the most and our father showing us how to peel and cook them into the goods we’d sell, but sneak us each a slice to taste.
Just like my family did then, we’ll take these apples and make some into pies or apple butter, others we’ll eat fresh, and some we’ll preserve in cans to use in the winter when the world rests from all of its work to nestle in with those we love. And its taste will bring with it the memory of this golden afternoon, forever ours to remember.
