Exit from Eden

Even in Vermont, a well-grown apple tree is expensive. Why? The care. The rootstock. The grafting. The years of tending, pruning, keeping the sapling growing on a portion of good land. Fertilizer.

And at last, a label, looped around an outstretched branch like a plastic hospital bracelet on a baby: Braeburn. Cox. McIntosh. Liberty.

It was autumn, the day before my 40th birthday, when the boys and I moved into our own house. Oh, the freedom of that day! They chose bedrooms — each his own. They began to draw on the walls, allowed at last, after all the years we’d spent in rented places where we knew better. A massive “sleeper sofa” sat in the living room, abandoned in place, too heavy for the house tenants before us to move. We arranged the space around it the way we wanted to: folding lawn chairs for now, a few lamps. Upstairs, a mattress for each of us, and a plastic milk crate for clothing.

A blond table with extensions anchored the kitchen, with matching chairs, all purchased from my brother, who’d carried them from our parents’ home. My grandmother’s tablecloth, blue-embroidered white linen squares pieced together, hung festive, and I began to bake. Bread. Brownies. Pizza, for the adolescents racing in and out, and to fuel their determination to build a tree house up in the woods.