[Creative Nonfiction] Heirloom

Read the third place entry for our week of November 17, 2024 prompt, Small Pleasures.

Heirloom
by Sara Barila

The peach is warm in my hand, having spent this balmy afternoon sunning itself. I twist it from the stem, careful not to bruise the delicate flesh, and I make my way down the weather-worn ladder with the golden orb in my hand, slightly fuzzy to the touch.

I live in a forest of small pleasures. This tree was planted by my grandfather, my Nonno, many years ago. It may be as old as me, this tree from which I collect my riches. The person who planted this tree, who took the time and care to graft two kinds of peach tree - white and yellow - together, is no longer here to enjoy the fruits of his labour. I make juice from the oranges that my Mum’s dad - my Papou - tended to, knowing that this will be the last time, as soon there may be a new house built where this tree grows.

As a child, I remember classmates going missing for a day and coming back a little quieter, their family name appearing in a solemn section of the school bulletin headed by a dove. It was a tangible reminder that my own grandparents wouldn’t be here forever. I had to be modest about having so many, I thought, lest someone realise and come to take one away. I even had granduncles and grandaunts! So many, there to spoil me with hazelnut chocolates or for me to bore with my repeated VHS playing during the school holidays. There to hand me a plastic shopping bag of tiny, tart mandarins or a bright orange Tupperware container of garlicky lentil soup. It felt incredibly lucky. It felt illegal.

I turned the idea that I couldn’t keep them forever over and over in my mind like small, sea-smoothed stone. The only thing that I could think to do was pray at bedtime, reciting their names in the same order every time. It’s been twenty years since those primary school days - nearing thirty, if I’m honest - and my greatest fears have played out. Many of my grandparents’ generation are no longer with us. The world didn’t end, but it feels a little less bright. As though I’ve lost the answers to the questions I never knew to ask. Sometimes, on nights when I remember, I recite their names in that same order. That stone is so well-worn that it’s more of a pebble, the kind you might find in your shoe. But it’s still there, a comforting memento that I’m not quite sure what to do with.

Now that I am here, and they are not, my heirlooms are the seeds that they planted in their new home twenty, forty, sixty years ago. I bite into the juicy, yellow peach from the tree and marvel at the magic within. Here it is, fruit from a tree that lives long after the people who nurtured it. Here it is, warmed by the sunshine and fragrant, just for me.

A Note From Our Judge,

Rachel Khoo

'Heirloom' had me utterly transported. The way it evoked the pure joy of biting into a sun-ripened peach - was simply marvellous. But what touched me was how skillfully the writer wove together elderly relatives, cherished food memories, and summer's warmth into something so familiar, yet entirely fresh.

About Sara Barila

Sara Barila is a South Australian writer with a deep love of anything earnest and silly. She decided she wanted to be an author at the age of six, which her (lovely, pragmatic and likely exhausted) mother told her was a good idea, but added that she'd also need to make money. When she's not working on her novel - or trying to make said money - Sara publishes some of her writing on her Substack, Bits and Bobs, which can be found @sarsparila.

This piece was written in response to the prompt Small Pleasures.