My first Mother’s Day as a mother with a baby in my arms was also my first Mother’s Day without my own mother on earth. That Mother’s Day of firsts and each since have been incredibly bittersweet. I finally understood the fierce love a mother has for her child and I could only whisper a “thank you” to heaven. The last several Mother’s Days I’ve asked for a simple day outside with my family planting our garden together. It seems a fitting way to honor that day by spending a day planting, nourishing and tending to a little tiny bit of life in our small corner of the world. Because of quarantine, we’ve gotten most of our garden planted early this year and I’ve already been able to spend lots of time out there contemplating life, growth and gardening.
I don’t consider myself a knowledgeable gardener. I don’t particularly enjoy tilling the soil or pulling weeds, yet I do get a unique thrill when the very first sprouts begin to pop up out of the ground. This. is. a. miracle! I mean, how, HOW, does a seed barely bigger than a dust mite become a carrot? How does one bean grow a vine that will produce countless green beans? An apple tree came from an apple seed? You can explain it to me using all kinds of terms, and I can, more or less, cognitively wrap my head around it- but it is still a miracle-we get to participate with creation! As soon as we plant the seeds, my kids love to check every day for signs that something is actually growing, transforming underneath the soil. Each day we go out and look with great intention and focus. “Is that something we planted or something else?” “Were these green things here yesterday?” “We have to be patient,” I say. And we do, but being patient doesn’t mean we stop hoping, stop caring, stop looking every day for the smallest sign of growth. Then one day, seemingly overnight, there is an obvious row of green peeking out, looking to see if it is safe to continue. All of a sudden, like a tiny promise of bounty, small leaves are reaching for the sunlight.
Now that we’ve planted in these same garden beds 3 summers in a row, an interesting phenomena has happened. A radish will grow where we planted radishes last year, a tomato plant will sprout where the tomatoes were 2 years ago. “Oh little one, were you sleeping under here all winter?” The conditions were the same. “Why did you wait to grow?” Or perhaps, you are the offspring of last year’s produce, one parting gift, after a summer of abundant gifting. Sooner than we realize in our adult worlds that spin so fast, those seeds will have grown, produced and shared more than our little family can handle. There will be nothing else to do but to continue the sharing with those around us. After all, love multiplies. The small seed is the reminder that love can bring forth more love exponentially, even if we don’t see it right away.
If I had never experienced the seasons before, I am quite sure I would have despaired during the first winter- so much death, so much harshness, so much cold. How can anything come back to life after so much darkness? But then, just a few extra minutes of sunlight a day, and in no time at all, life is bursting forth in abundance.
This Mother’s Day, let’s remember and honor all those women who tended to us and nourished us, who patiently and faithfully hoped for us-especially through the winters of our lives, who cherished our smallest moments of growth, who pruned us lovingly even when it hurt, who cultivated our lives that allowed for an overabundance of love to flourish.