Pistachio Tree

I’m not sure when I began.

At first there was only darkness, and the weight of earth, and then one day, the light.

I felt it before I saw it, warmth pressing shifting through the soil as I pushed upward, thin and uncertain.

Rough and calloused hands tended me carefully. They watered the ground at my feet and cleared the weeds that tried to tangle me. They spoke stories to me as if I could hear, and I suppose I did, in my own way. I learned the sound of laughter before I ever made my first leaf.

Years passed before I could offer them anything back.

While the children of the house grew taller, I did as well. They marked their height on the courtyard wall, somehow the marks climbed faster than my branches did. Seasons turned: wind, dust, rain. Sometimes the family worried over poor harvests. Sometimes they sang. Always, they returned to me to sit in my shade, to rest, to wait.

Ten years. That is how long it took before my first real gift for them ripened.

A small cluster, barely enough to fill two hands of shells split open just slightly.

They celebrated as if it were a miracle.

And so the cycle began.

Decades folded into each other like pages.

Their children became parents. Grandparents became stories told around the table. I learned patience: some years I was generous, others I needed to gather strength. But when I bore fruit, they treated each pistachio with care.

Merchants came and went. New roads appeared. Different languages drifted through the market air, stitched together by bargaining and laughter. I stayed rooted, watching history pass through the courtyard.

A hundred years is a long time for a human, but not long at all for a tree.

I have seen drought and rain, quarrels and reconciliations, mourning and weddings. I’ve watched the same stories repeat themselves in different faces. And still with every season, when my branches lift their green offerings to the sun, someone smiles with the same gratitude as the first family did.