A Gift In My Garden

        One day in 1996 , during the early spring my mother died after a battle with ovarian cancer, my sister-in-law called me to ask if I wanted some of my mother’s Easter lilies from her front yard bed at the ranch.

        My mother had planted those lilies, and because my sister-in-law and brother were living in the house , where my mother and father had lived for years, they were surrounded by my mother’s gardening.

        I said yes, knowing I was in over my head ( I knew nothing about lilies), but I had felt in over my head since her death anyway.

        What was one more example of how I was supposed to now be grown up and wise and in matriarchal charge of our now disjointed motley family?

        How was I to know how to make things grow as she had?

        So when the lilies were graciously delivered to me, I planted them in my front flower bed, knowing we were all at risk:  the lilies that had survived and thrived for years for my mother, and me , because I couldn’t stand to lose anything else.

        Then on May 18th, my birthday, as I walked across the street from the high school where I taught, and I began to walk through my yard, I saw it.

        One single lily. Just one. Just for me.

Happy Birthday Laura,

                   Love Mother

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        This memory was triggered this afternoon by another gardening surprise, illustrated in the photo above.

        My hyacinths are starting to bloom. Again- I do not know why. They are not supposed to grow in my area.  We just had a freeze.  I planted them feeling as insecure as I did that spring 14 years ago.

        Thank you Mother.