– You gave birth to four? Take them and figure it out yourself, this is too much! – my husband said to me, barely crossing the threshold.

I looked at him without blinking. My head was empty.

Labor lasted 18 hours. The flickering light of hospital lamps. The screams of midwives. My scream, tearing apart the border between life and death.

When the first baby – Petya – was born, I thought that this was the end of the road, I fell into oblivion, although I knew that more would follow. But Masha appeared after him. Then Lena. And, finally, Oleg.

Sergey stood at the front door of our house, without taking off his outerwear. In his hand – a bottle. Drops from it fell on the worn floor, but I did not care at all.

— I didn’t agree on this, — he continued, avoiding looking at the children. — I wanted a normal family. Not… this.

“This” — were our offspring. Our flesh and blood. Our eyes, noses, fingers.

Village women give birth in pairs — already an event. Three — a topic of conversation for many years. Four…

“How are you going to feed them?” — Sergey nervously ran his hand through his hair. — Where will we get the money? Who will look after them?

I was silent. The children were sleeping. The world narrowed to a small room with four cradles, made by my father in one sleepless night.

“Tanya, do you hear?” — he raised his voice.

“You knew and were ready, and now you’re saying this? Go away,” I said quietly. “Just disappear.”

Sergey froze. Then he shook his head:

“You’re crazy. Four children. My God. I didn’t believe it until the very end.

He closed the door behind him.

I stood by the window, watching his silhouette dissolve into the twilight. Sergey walked quickly. He never turned around.

Galina, the neighbor, was the first to arrive. Without a word, she took a broom, swept up the ashes, and lit the stove. Then Nina Petrovna, the former teacher, appeared.

She sat down by the cradle and began to sing. By evening, other women had arrived. Someone brought soup, someone brought diapers.

“You’ll hold out, girl,” said Baba Klava, the oldest woman in the village. “You’re not the first, and you’re not the last.”

And at night I was left alone. The children were sleeping. It was so quiet in the house. On the table were four birth certificates. Four names.

I didn’t cry. The tears froze somewhere inside. Instead, there was determination, as hard as a rock.

I called my father. “Daddy,” I said. “He’s gone.”

A pause. Heavy breathing. “I’ll come tomorrow,” he answered simply.

That night, I made a promise to myself.

“I can handle it,” I whispered.

My father arrived in the morning. He looked at his grandchildren. He put all the money he had on the table.

– I’ll build another room. It will be cramped with four in the winter.

That’s how our life began. Without Sergei. Without self-pity. With love that blossomed like an apple tree outside the window — stubbornly, no matter what.

The childhood of my four children flowed like a river — sometimes violently, sometimes calmly, but always filling the banks with life.

Our father’s house on the edge of the village became our refuge.

“It’s not right for children to grow up without grandma’s fairy tales,” my mother said, hugging each of them.

The children grew up like sunflowers — all in different directions, but toward the same sun. Masha — slender, dreamy, with gray eyes, knew how to find beauty in everything.

Petya — a strong, serious boy, all like his grandfather, already at the age of five he helped chop kindling.

Lena — the calmest, always with a book, built shelters for ants.

Oleg is a restless dreamer, with constantly skinned knees.

Our yard was filled with voices from early morning until late evening. What had previously seemed impossible became routine.

I learned to cook on the stove, holding a baby in my arms. I learned to darn clothes in the dim light, when everyone was already asleep. I learned to stretch finances like pie dough – thinly, but so that there was enough for everyone. My father – Grandfather Ivan for the children – became their informal patron. He never coddled, did not fawn, but was always there. Silent, solid, like a mighty oak tree by the river.

“Let’s go, eaglets,” he would say on Saturdays, gathering his grandchildren. And he would take them to the forest, to fish, to the field – to teach them worldly wisdom.

One day they returned in the evening, smeared with clay and hung with branches.

“What is this?” — I asked, meeting them at the gate.

— Roots, Mom, — Petya answered seriously. — Grandpa says you need to put down strong roots. Then no storm is scary. That’s why we smeared ourselves with earth.

Later they planted a row of apple trees along the road to the house. Four young trees — for each of them. As a symbol, as a promise.

Grandma Maria, my mother, became the keeper of our hearth. Round, soft, smelling of baked goods, she knew how to turn weekdays into holidays. — And what do we have today? — the children asked every morning.

— Today is Titmouse Day! — she answered. — Or the day of the first snow, or the day of nuts.

And immediately a tradition was born, a fairy tale, a game associated with this fictitious celebration. The children believed — sincerely, completely. Finances… Yes, it was not easy with finances. When the children grew up to three years old, I started working at the post office – half a day, while grandma looked after them.

At night, I sewed clothes for the children, painted old sweaters with bright patterns so that no one would guess – remade. My father also worked, so there was enough for food.

We had a vegetable garden – small, but generous. And chickens, and two goats, which the children called Star and Daisy. There was enough milk for ourselves and for the neighbors to sell. Children’s questions about their father inevitably arose. Lena was the first to ask when she turned five.

— Mom, where is our dad?

I froze. What to say? How to explain betrayal without destroying the child’s faith in people? — He was too weak for such love, — I answered. — He was scared. But you and I are strong.

— Like oaks? — Petya clarified.

— Like oaks, — I confirmed.

They accepted this explanation with amazing wisdom. Without bitterness, without resentment. Just as a fact of life.

Our house became not just a building — but a small country with its own laws and customs.

We had our own rituals — evening reading of books, Sunday pancakes, Thursday walks to the river.

We had our own economy — everyone did work according to their strength. We had our own diplomacy — peaceful resolution of conflicts at a large table.

And most importantly, we had love – not sentimental, not from books, but real. The kind that shows in calluses on the hands, in lack of sleep, in the ability to share the last piece of food between five.

One day we learned that Sergey got married in the neighboring area.

The children took the news calmly. Somehow they overheard conversations, although they had never seen their father.

“Does he have another family now?” Oleg asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Poor thing,” Masha suddenly said. “He has only one family, and we have all of us.”

25 years flew by like a single breath. The children grew up, flew off to different cities, but our home remained the heart, where they returned again and again. Masha became a designer. Her bright ideas turned into interiors, from which – according to customers – it became warmer to live.

A grandmother’s soul manifested itself in her – to create comfort out of nothing. Petya studied to be an engineer, built bridges. As thorough as a grandfather, he believed that connecting the banks was the best thing a person could do.

Lena, our quiet one, entered the medical academy. “I want to treat,” she said in her senior year, and hasn’t deviated from her path since.

And Oleg, the eternal inventor, became a literature teacher. “The best way to remain an eternal child,” he laughed.

And me? I was just a mother. For four. For the nine grandchildren who came later. For the neighbors’ children who came running to the smell of fresh bread. Father aged unnoticed. First, wrinkles appeared around his eyes — deep as river channels.

Then silver threads in his hair — not individual strands, but entire sections. His gait became more leisurely, but his posture remained straight and majestic.

He left quietly, during his sleep. The day before, we all got together — it was a coincidence that the children arrived at the same time.

I remember him sitting on the veranda, watching his grandchildren frolicking in the garden.

“It turned out well, Tanya,” he said to me. “That’s right.”

I didn’t know then that these were parting words.

He left this world at night. Without pain, without fear. With a slight smile, said his mother, who found him in the morning. As if he saw something beautiful before the end.

The whole village saw him off. The men who had known him for half a century stood silently. The women whom he had helped repair roofs and chop wood were crying. The children stuck together, shoulder to shoulder, four of them, so similar and so different. At the fresh hill, when people began to disperse, they took out a cedar sapling.

“Grandfather said,” Petya said, kneading a lump of earth in his hands, “a cedar lives for three hundred years, grows for three hundred years, and then dies for another three hundred years.”

“Almost forever,” added Lena, wiping away her tears.

They planted the tree together, just as they had once planted apple trees with Grandfather.

— Do you remember how he taught us to catch crayfish? — Oleg asked when we were returning home.

— And do you remember how we built a raft on the river? — Petya picked up.

— And how he told us about the constellations, — Masha added.

— And about the bear we met in the raspberry patch, — Lena smiled through her tears.

The memories flowed like a stream — an endless series of stories where grandfather was a hero, a mentor, a friend. After the funeral, the children left — work, families, responsibilities. The house was empty. Mom and I were left alone. She had turned completely gray, but her gaze remained clear, her hands — warm.

— That’s how it happens, — she told me one evening. — Sergey thought that a wife with four children was the end of life. But it turned out — a whole world.

Five years later, Mom was gone too.

She left in her sleep, like Dad. And again the children gathered, again the stories were heard – now about Grandma Maria, about her fairy tales, about holidays out of nothing. I was left alone in the big house. But not for long.

Oleg got divorced and came back with a little daughter. Then Petya’s wife sent their eldest to us for a while – “to gain village strength.” Masha and her husband bought a house next door.

During the summer holidays, Lena sent her twins “to Grandma’s for fresh milk.”

And again, like twenty years ago, our yard was filled with voices. The new generation picked berries from the very bushes that their parents planted. Climbed onto the roof of the barn. Hid in the tall grass. Built huts and fortresses. And only sometimes, on quiet evenings, sitting by the window, I caught myself thinking: “He left then, leaving me four. He thought that I would not cope. God, how we coped.”

The cedar next to my father’s grave was gaining strength, reaching for the sky. And our house seemed to become more spacious with each passing year – accommodating new stories, new lives, new love.

One summer, when everyone had gathered together again, we were sitting on the veranda – a large circle of children, grandchildren, their spouses. Glasses clinked, laughter sounded. Someone was telling stories, someone was playing the guitar. Neighbors dropped in for a light. I looked at them – my beautiful, strong, happy – and suddenly realized: this is real wealth.

Not gold, not a career, not fame. But a house full of people who know their roots and know how to love.

“Grandma,” my youngest grandson asked me, climbing onto my lap. “Is it true that our family is the largest in the village?”

“It’s true,” I said, looking at the stars appearing in the summer sky. “And the strongest.