Meet the Maples

On autumn weekends, Mrs. Maple liked nothing better than to cram the little saplings into the back of the Civic and drive to the retirement villa to admire the changing seniors. She’d ooh and aah at their pale cataracts and crow’s feet, the delicious fawns of their liver spots. The saplings would hip-hop the villa grounds, scouting out the longest white hairs to wax for their scrapbooks. When he was just a sprout, Mr. Maple himself had found a clump of prime grey, mysteriously snagged on a picket fence. Every Christmas, it held pride of place on the Maple mantelpiece.

Image: Yvonne Boothroyd.