I inherited these earthy rituals from my mother. Countless Sundays of my childhood were spent driving out to my maternal grandmother’s farm to pick okra, tomatoes, squash (so itchy) and many other vegetables. After the picking, there was the canning: peach preserves, pear preserves, bread and butter pickles. And the prized delicacy from Granny’s storm cellar was always a jar of pickled okra, which my sister and I fought over on more than one occasion.
My mother became a city girl. But she never lost her love of the earth. She transferred her mother’s green thumb into a love of landscaping and growing exotic ferns and gorgeous flowers lining the walk to our home. On the occasional days when my hydrangeas are in full bloom or my garden has produced a whole bowl full of tomatoes, I take a picture and email it to my mom so that she can see I am trying to carry on her reverence for the earth.
Today is my mother’s birthday and so I am thinking about all the bounty that she poured into my life. As she traverses the eighth decade of life, I grow to treasure more deeply the earthy goodness I experience when I am around her. She is practical and hard working and no-nonsense but she is also a lover of beauty, creative and extravagantly compassionate. She is an independent thinker and we vehemently disagree on some topics. But even when you disagree with her, she is fiercely loyal. My sister and I still both call her when we are down and she listens and never lets on that she has other things to do right now. It is because of my mom that my favorite scripture is, “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” (Romans 8) The fruit of her love is my constant companion.
Grace and Peace,
