My mother’s zest for life preceded her into every space she entered.  She embraced whatever she did with passion.  Her children, being a Cub Scout den mother, her work, friendships: Nothing fell below prime importance for her.  She spread herself thin but seemed to me to thrive.

But what do I know:  she died when I was 29, still clueless, and lost in a fog of my emotional and physical disabilities.  I like to think of her in laudatory phrasing — the best mother, a fiercely loyal daughter, a doggedly determined wife.  At sixty, though, I look back and realize that as a child, as a young girl, as an adult, I brushed my  mother with gold wash.  Perhaps every daughter does, but certainly, I did.

Unquestionably, though, my mother felt at home in her garden.  She pushed earth every where she could to create more space for flowers, vegetables, bird feeders, sun dials.  She tilled and weeded, planted and nurtured.  As her children left home, she claimed more and more yard space for cultivating.  She’d stand in her back yard and survey the blooms, the squash, the young asparagus plants — and smile so sweetly that my heart clenched.

I am my mother’s daughter.  Before I left for work yesterday, I grouped a few of my pots on the table that stands on my deck, so that when the rain came, they could drink its nourishment.  As the storm hit last evening, I stood on the porch, surrounded by pansies and begonias, gazing at my small efforts to capture the same sense of accomplishment that my mother felt.  Working in the yard tires me and poses difficulties that I have not yet learned to negotiate.  So I turn the yearning for nurturing which I inherited from my mother to smaller  blooms.

I have to move the pots back to their wicker stands, now that the rain passes.  It’s extra work.  But I’m not complaining.  My flowers bring me pleasure, and like anything which pleases, it’s worth the effort.