By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

"Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them" -- Matthew 7:16, 18. 20.

     I've always known my dad loved trees. When he lived in California, he raised exotic fruit trees in his backyard: loquats, guava, fig, pomegranate, tangerine, persimmons, and just about everything else. He treated them like his children. When we moved to our new house in Orem, Utah, there was a plum tree by the mailbox that had never given fruit. The previous owners told him it was an "ornamental" tree, not meant to bear fruit. My father smiled. "That," he said, "is because you don't water it correctly. He immediately began to work on that little plum tree. He cut it back, fed it, and started watering it at the drip-line where the farthest branches hung. That next summer, his little plum tree was loaded with delicious purple plums.

     My father taught his kids to care for trees, just like his father had taught him. When I was little I would tag along with Dad to the local orchard wearing my juice-stained chest bag to hold my fruit so I wouldn't drop or damage any of it. He taught me the right way to pick apples, how to swipe my index finger gently across the top of the apple where the stem was connected to the spur. With a little bit of a twist and flick, the apple could come off without pulling or breaking the spur, and fruit could e grown the next year on the preserved spur. I remember when he taught me the importance of thinning peaches and how it upset me to have to throw away good little peaches. "It's always better," my dad explained, "to have 2,000 perfect peaches than a million tiny bruised ones"

     I've always known how much my father cared about trees, but it wasn't until 6 years ago that I found out why. "Just after you were born," he told me, " I planted a Jonathan Apple for you, and I planted a nectarine tree after your brother was born." He had never told anybody before; it was his personal secret. I've learned that it represented how he felt about being a parent. "When you give good things to a tree and you care for it properly, it produces good fruit."

     The same thing goes for children.

     When I was seven years old, I was punished for lying about stealing the fruit gushers from under my parent's bed. My punishment: sitting on the toilet. I don't know why it was on the toilet instead of on my bed; maybe the bathroom was the only place in the house where I wouldn't have fun. On the back of the toilet there was a cooking timer set for sixty minutes. I remember changing the clock a few minutes ahead in hopes of shortening my punishment. When the timer went off, I ran down to my dad's office holding the timer with the biggest smile on my face, proud of my accomplishment for out-witting my father. "Dad, I'm done. Cant I go play now?"

     Dad looked at his watch and said "Kelly, you have another sixteen minutes. Reset the timer to sixty and start over." I was horrified. How could he possibly ground me two times in a row? The way my father parented, it didn't pay to cheat. It didn't occur to me then that it would have been much easier for him to just let me go. He didn't have to sit there ad police my punishment for another hour. But raising kids, like growing trees, takes a long time and much effort. And a tree-grower knows that if a sapling is allowed to lean even a little bit as it grows, it will grow crooked and quite possibly fall.

     Sometimes when my father grounded me for a day or made me write fifty times in cursive "I will always do my chores correctly and not lie about them," I felt wronged because my younger brother, Hootie, never got those punishments. But Hootie had a stronger conscience than I ever had. If he ever did something wrong, he would tell on himself, and my dad would let Hootie figure out his own punishment. Its like my father told me: "You have to know what a specific type of tree needs and when it needs it." I guess my father knew us well enough to know that David's conscious was punishment enough. I would cry because I'd been caught. Hootie would cry because he did it.

     Some of dad's lessons sank in without me knowing it. In high school when I had to make choices between gymnastics, dance, performing, basketball, volleyball, and scholastics--all things that were very important to me--I knew I had to let a few go. It's better to do a few things right than let everything get "bruised."

     During a basketball game in high school, I remember stealing the ball and driving down the court for the score. From the side-line where I was running, I could hear my father's voice yelling "All the way, Kelly! All the way!" I scored, and on my way back down the court, I glanced over to where he was sitting. He was nodding and smiling a very familiar smile; it was the same smile he wore when we would pick fruit together. Its the same smile he gets when he's cutting back his fruit trees, the same smile he had on his face when he made me write cursive, and sent me back to redo my sixty minutes in the bathroom. I think I've begun to understand what that smile might mean. It has something to do with being a steward, with taking care of something that without care would die, go wild, or grow itself to death. It has to do with helping a tree be more than just an ornamental tree, helping it bear good fruit.

     I was born to bear good fruit.