Thoughtful

My grandma had a pear tree in her front yard.

My sister, cousin, and I would watch for the pears to show up on the branches and then wait impatiently until we could eat them.

The pears were never harvested for use in the kitchen or for sale, so it was as if, for a little while each year, we had our own outdoor fruit bowl.

The only times I ate pears were straight from that tree or canned pears in school lunches.  That is why I was surprised to learn that the pears we were eating from the tree were not exactly ripe.

The pears were a pretty light green.  They were firm, maybe comparable to an apple.  The pears on "our" tree never came to the full, somewhat soft, ripeness they should have, partly because of how quickly we ate them when (we thought) they were ready, and partly because of the animals and wind knocking them to the ground.

I suppose that I could have then made an attempt then to allow them to ripen fully, but I'd been eating them this way for several years, and that's how I liked them.