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Now that he is in college, his hair is wild, parted in the middle. A sleek ponytail mass hangs down to his shoulder blades. He's recently grown a goatee that gives him a Euro-look, a look that I never knew could exist inside our family's physical feature gene pool.

He and I are seven years apart, but a good history outweighs any sort of awkwardness that might arise when we encounter each other now, along with the fact that he is my older brother.

Grade: D—

Mr. Digges, the assignment was a seven- to ten-page essay, including research, on a prominent American.

Portrait of Charles / Photo by Stephen Digges

Missouri. The late seventies. My mother, my five sisters and I walk together, shifting babies on our hips. We make our way along the fence to the one cherry tree in our apple orchard.

We pass the beehives, the rich summer foliage. On her walks, our mother has discovered that this year the tree has produced thousands of plump cherries. She wants us to pick as many as we can and take them home with us to make pies.

Our older children run out ahead to explore the barn. At this time my five sisters and I have eleven children— seven boys and four girls, in ages from about twelve to infancy. In the years to come there will be six more children born to the Sugarbaker women.

Because we have been to church, we are wearing dresses, pale yellow, blue, white. We know ourselves to be strong and attractive. There are ten years between the oldest sister, who is thirty-five, and the youngest, who is twenty-five.

In her late sixties, our mother looks years younger. She is among the tallest of us at five feet, ten inches. We are attentive to her now in ways we never imagined.

Our bare legs sweep the grasses as we shift babies on our hips or set them down to toddle along, our blond to light brown to chestnut hair combed back with our fingers, hair the color of our children's, our nieces and nephews. We are versions of one another, versions of the ancestors.

As we walk we compliment each other on how well we look, how Connie has lost weight after the birth of her Tom, how beautifully Rena has fixed her hair—many tiny braids swept up in a bun, and will she show us how it's done?

We have time before we put lunch on the table, and then all of us will be leaving, returning home with our husbands and children to Illinois, Florida, California, Washington, D.C., and Minnesota. Connie and her husband and two boys will drive home to St. Louis.

The fact of the cherries and whether they make it home with us is irrelevant. Our mother wants us to pick cherries together and we want her to have the pleasure of the memory. She'll write her sister about it, describe it in the evening to our father. Plastic bags in her hands, she is delighted, a bit breathless as she leads the way to the tree.

We have many questions for her and for each other regarding our children, their quirks and behaviors. Charles's teacher has expressed concern that he prefers to play alone rather than with the group, prefers reading to sports. Rena worries that her baby, Geneva, so named for our mother, doesn't yet sleep through the night.

Mother's concern is generous and devout. Listening to her advice we hear how cared for we were as children. Her tone is one we recognize and fall into. It is an aria, a fugue, a round that returns sympathy for discernment. We know it like birdsong, like water filling a sink, dishes as they are washed and stacked, and the smell of Jergens lotion.

“Charles is a thinker,” she tells me, “like his grandfather. I see no problem with his playing alone, as long as he has friends.”

“He does,” I say. “Lots.”

“Well, that's fine, then, darling. Remember your brother Paul—well you wouldn't. He's so much older than you, but as a little guy he, too, was quiet, loved playing alone and reading just like Charles. Sometimes I wept at how good he was. And look at him!”

Mother beams at the thought of her second son. “He's doing so well. Why he's chief of surgery now. And how he loves his