Huge, so tall that their branches seemed to be touching the bright blue dome of the summer sky arching high above them, making her feel tiny and insignificant. That feeling had never changed, the adult woman felt the same way when she looked up at their green crowns as the young girl used to feel a long time ago.
She sat up and looked towards the nearby lake where her husband and their small son played with a ball. She waved at them and smiled, when they looked at her in unison, as if they could feel her eyes trained on them.
Leaning against the nearest tree trunk the woman opened her book, but the words and lines seemed to dance in front of her eyes disobediently, as old memories awakened by the happy image started to stir and seep into the forefront of her mind.
She remembered herself sitting in the exact same place many summers ago. Her parents, now tired, weathered and grey, were still very young then. And her husband, a proud parent himself today, was only a lanky, shy, next door neighbours' son, a year older than herself. She was seven when they first met. Even then, he would spend hours playing or fishing with her father while she read quietly in the shadows of the trees.
Those did not change much, she remembered them always being huge and impressive, their infinite leaves rippling in the warm summer breeze, or their bare branches groaning under the weight of snow in winter.
Another memory followed the first-- a vision of a large group of highschoolers choosing this spot as the perfect place to spend one summer night under the stars, the first one without the supervision of adults. She could see herself, and him, among the others whose names she had nearly forgotten by now, sitting at the edge of the lake, gazing at the shimmering dots of light piercing the black sky. She smiled as she watched herself disappearing into one of the tents they had set up, to read, while he joined other boys for a midnight swim.
She put her hand on her belly soothingly, recalled to the present moment when she felt their soon to be born second offspring move, even as her two men ran to her, laughing, sprinkling her with cool drops of lake water. She hid her book behind her back before the water dripping from their swim shorts would damage it.
"You two!" She called in pretend offence, stroking their wet hair as they laid down next to her, chuckling.
"It's incredible how much you read. And you never get bored..." her husband mused, while their son asked the inevitable, absolutely predictable, "Why, mummy? Why do you always read?"
"Because... I can see the trees smile when I leaf through a book," she said seriously, but could not suppress a smile at his puzzled look, now trained on the branches and leaves dancing in the wind above their heads. "Their... souls, and those of their siblings and children are woven into every book's pages. If I read, then they continue to live even after they are no longer in this world, just in a different form... just like we will in you..." she added gently, smiling at the curious little boy who had no idea what she was talking about.
"But why?" he asked again, making both of his parents laugh.
"How about we eat those blueberry muffins mummy made now, little man, I'm hungry. And I bet your sister is too." Her husband said, putting his hand on her belly tenderly, smiling at her.
"Yes! But I want two, and you and mummy can share one..."
"Oh, don't worry, we brought more than enough for all of us," she said, returning the smile of the trees watching them from above.
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