The 8-year-old slipped in gently, he knew better than to tear through his father's offices during surgery hours. He quietly asked, "Dad, did I do this right?" Even before he'd finished speaking, the boy knew he had done something wrong, yet again, and was turning to run out of his father's study protecting the small creature he carried.

"Lucien! Out!" came the impatient reply. "You know you are not to interrupt when I'm with a patient."

Finally the last patient gone, Genevieve brought tea to her husband in his study. She sat down across from him to pour. "Thomas, Lucien is just a little boy, and more, he is your son, our son. He needs your approval. Did you even notice what he had in his hands?"

Thomas hmmphed, "He is old enough to follow the rules of my house!"

His wife held out her empty hands in offering, cupped much like her son's had been a short time ago, "A bird, an injured bird. He knows your pleasure in watching them, Thomas. It had a broken wing, and he had tried to mend it. He's trying to imitate you, to see if you will take pleasure in him.

"Oh, Thomas, don't you see – one day the two of you will need one another. You cannot keep pushing him away!"

OoOoO

The father found his son, dirty hands and all, near the corner of a flower bed. What was his brown-thumbed scamp up to now? He thought of his wife's plea and sighed. "Lucien?" He leaned down, "What do you have here?"

"Just a bird, I tried to mend it, but I must've done it wrong, and it died, so I buried it," pain of failure flowed in the boy's voice and down his cheeks.

"Even the best doctors lose their patients sometimes, Lucien," his father tried to throw him a preserver, awkwardly but gently letting a hand rest on the boy's shoulder.

The lad stared fixedly at the ground, whispering, "but never you." The boy smoothed the soil nervously where he remained crouched.

"'Fraid so, son. One must learn to be brave enough to try again for the next who needs help." The boy looked up shyly, shocked at that admission. "Now," the father reached down to the boy's hands, "I'll just put these tools away, and you go wash; time to come in."

OoOoO

Two years later, the father found his son in the garden again with only memories left to interpret one for the other.

"Another bird, Lucian?"

The boy, a bit taller and more serious now, startled, gripping the trowel in both hands as if he might need a shield. "N-no, sir. Mrs. Henry gave me a pear to eat, and after I was done, I planted the core."

"Did you not think to ask permission to plant in the garden?"

"I'm sorry, sir. I thought you'd want it. I'd take care of it, sir – mow and trim the grass around it, water it."

"And what made you think that I would want a pear tree in the middle of my garden, Lucien?"

"Well, I heard Mrs. Henry say it was a d'Anjou pear, so I thought it was French, and that it might remind us of maman as it grew."

"Oh, Lucien … " the hint of a laugh was swallowed by the man's misery, and his son missed it entirely. "What shall I do with you?"