By James Spain - Aug 4, 2020 | 1 comment

An apple tree grew as did a family.

Sometimes I think back to my earliest memories as a young child. The sun is shining with a slight refreshing breeze and the apple blossoms are in bloom. I am sitting beneath an ancient apple tree in a field on our family farm. The farm has been in our family for over a century and we visited each year to spend our precious summer moments with those we loved creating more memories that I hold dearly within my heart to this very day. Life was simple for this young boy surrounded by his loving family, nestled carefully in the north woods of New Hampshire. The feeling of security and warmth of the embraces from my family from so long ago, people that were aged during an era when there was much appreciation for the little things in life.

Life on the family farm was indeed a tradition that was handed from one generation to the next. The apple tree that I spent my summer hours daydreaming beneath was planted a century before I was born by my great grandfather. A simple little apple sapling that harbored a memory and was revered by my family. My great grandfather John purchased this farm in the year 1878 and soon welcomed the young woman that he would marry. She was a beautiful woman in many ways and her personality brought life to this farm as well as beauty, her name was Anna. The day she agreed to marry my great grandfather there were many arrangements made for the perfect ceremony on the hill near the farmhouse.

My great grandfather welcomed his wife to be as she arrived with her parents in a horse drawn carriage. He helped her from the carriage and embraced his true love. Within her hands she held a small sapling from the home she had departed to marry her love, it was a small apple tree that she wished to plant here on the farm where she would spend the rest of her years with her new husband. My great grandfather was pleased and immediately set about planting the small apple tree in the field near the house with a view, right on the spot they would be married within hours.

The beautiful bride named Anna married the gentleman farmer named John, yes, they became my great grandparents and the stories of their great love could be seen in the eyes of the four children they welcomed in the coming years. Their young boy named John became my grandfather and his daughter Mary became my mother.

As the sun set on the day John and Anna married in 1878 the shadow of the small apple tree rippled in the slight breeze, waving to the happy couple as they embarked on their long lives together. They called the apple tree their wedding tree and nurtured the tree as they nurtured their love for each other, their children and eventually their grandchildren. The small apple tree grew into a healthy tree on the farm, silhouetted each evening by the setting sun behind the hills beyond. The leaves would visit each spring with brilliant apple blossoms year after year and conclude with delicious fruit to feed the loving family each fall.

As the years passed the wedding tree sadly witnessed the loss of the loving couple that so eagerly planted it in 1878. The next generation arrived and cared for both the wedding tree and the beautiful love story associated with it, nurturing, pruning and consuming the delicious apples each fall as the New England forest blazed with brilliant foliage surrounding it. My grandfather eventually inherited the family farm and raised my mother in the shade of the old apple tree held so fondly in our memory. She would spend hours enjoying her rope swing beneath the immense apple tree and imagine the bygone days when her ancestors planted the apple tree on their special wedding day.

I spent my early years beneath that loving tree too. The tree that held a family together in good times and sad times. A tree that told a story as it unselfishly provided fruit year after year to satisfy the growing family. Apple cider, apple pies and summer shade from this glorious wedding tree were always better than any other tree on our family farm.

As the sun sets this day, I sit beneath the wedding tree. I think about the family that stood here that day in 1878 and how the love of John and Anna changed my world. Evening will be visiting soon and I must depart for my home. I stand and admire the wedding tree whose roots run very deep within my family. It is this tree that I do hug each time I leave the farm and in return feel the warmth embrace of my ancestors again and again.