Cider
By: Missy Larae
Tags: LGBTQ, Veterans, Home, Family, Relationships

“It’s an apple tree,” Liz said and laughed. The sun was shining through the clouds giving the wet pavement a glaze that threw rainbows along the path leading behind the house.

“Yeah, I wanted it to be a surprise. It’s our first year here, and we’ve got to do something with the field at the back of the house. I figured apples would be a good place to start. What do you think?” Helen lifted the tree from the truck bed and set it in the wheelbarrow she’d brought up from the barn.

“I think it’s nice. I don’t bake pie, though, if that’s what you’re hoping for,” Liz said and laughed again. The year had been magical. She wasn’t expecting an apple tree for her anniversary present, but she wasn’t disappointed. With Helen, she was never disappointed. They planted the apple tree along the path bordering her garden and the back yard. The second-year the apple tree was growing, they decided to fill the entire field with them. The soil was perfect for it, and they liked to think their apple trees were part of the family. Until they started their own, their son Liam was born the year after, and the tree still grew. He was nearing three by the time the tree produced its first fruit. The first year the apples were small but fit perfectly in Liam’s little hands.

The apple tree was the first tree Liam fell out of, too. He didn’t break anything, but he did stay away from it for a while. Before long, the promise of tart apples was too much to bear, and he climbed it once again. They sold the first full crop from the tree at the farmer’s market as Liz carried their second child. It was a baby girl this time. Victory came just before the harvest, and they took her newborn photos as the apple blossoms filled the trees. She was a May baby, and Helen made buckets of apple sauce for them.

The trees continued to flower, the apples continued to grow, and the children got older and older. They left home, eventually, as the blossoms heralded Liam’s acceptance to West Point. A half-decade later, Victory was married beneath the apple blossoms as her mothers held tissues to their lips and wiped away their tears.

The old apple tree, its branches heavy and burdened with fruit, was part of them. Liam came home from the war, and he, too, was burdened. They found him there, under the tree on a fall evening with a letter neither one could bear to read. The leaves were gone, and so was he. That was the darkest day the tree ever saw, but it did not stop its flowering and bearing of fruit. It was an old friend comforting them when Helen and Liz would lay beneath it soaking its roots with tears.

Their grandson was born a few years later, and he also picked the fruit of the tree with his chubby fingers. His grandmothers would watch from their chairs on the porch as Victory and Peter helped little Liam grab all the apples from the lowest branches.

Peter was brilliant and took the apples they harvested the year after little Liam was born and turned them into cider. That’s what the locals drank for years to come. Liam’s Cider was born of love and joy, of pain and hope from the tree that love brought home.

The apples picked from the first tree, the one that Helen carted to the backfield in her wheelbarrow, are picked separately and bottled just for the two of them. They named it Liam’s Legacy, and it costs twice what the others do. They open a bottle on their anniversary and share it the way that lovers do. Hands old and wrinkled but still firm, they drink to remember where they came from.

Now, a cider bottle sits on the mantle of the fireplace in the old house with an empty back porch. It sits and waits for the trees to bloom, the apples to drop, and the cycle of life to continue marching on. It’s what love built when two hearts fell for one another. It tastes sweeter than any other cider anyone ever sipped. It’s the sip of hope and of what can be when truth and dignity are respected.

To learn more about how you can help veterans, please consider donating to Mission 22, a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting vets with mental health issues.

https://mission22.com

To learn more about how you can assist the LGBTQ+ community and learn more about their fight for equality, please visit The Human Rights campaign.

https://www.hrc.org