MY MOTHER’S GARDEN

Mother and daughter find their old domain like crickets in the grass.

Marilyn & my mother Johanna at the piano, photo taken by my dad Harry in 1995

From where I am sitting, I am looking at the beautiful old upright piano I played as a child and as a teen-ager. The wood is so mellow, the sound of an aged golden yellow. It is to be mine—I am to inherit it, but I would not take it out of my parents’ home, even though neither of them plays piano.

There have been times I felt put upon to play for them or for visiting friends and relatives. Now it is so quiet here, playing and singing is a way of communicating with my mother. My mother does not admit to much. I consider her a consummate writer, yet she believes she isn’t competent to give me a second opinion on a word I’m not sure how to spell. We’re all good spellers in my family. I take it so for granted, as I get older, I notice it’s a little like my eyesight—its acuity is fading slightly. I look at a word and it seems completely foreign.

My mother’s ability is still there, I believe, even beneath the inroads the strokes have made inroads on her brain circuits. Last night, as I sang and played, she recognized the old German Lieder (and Velvet Shoes, a poem by Elinor Wylie set to music by Randall Thompson) and joined in with me surer than I of the words and melody.

I didn’t think I’d have a moment like that with her again. I was crying, and she kept apologizing for making me cry. I just kept telling her it was okay and that I loved her.

Mother’s and daughter’s voices blending and intertwining—not a thing to do with performance or being heard—everything to do with remembering a heritage lost on the surface of a life in its multiplicity and clamor. Yet at the end of the night, all is quiet, and mother and daughter, like crickets in the grass, find their old domain.

To be sure, it has not always been honored the way it needed to be. To be sure, it can never be taken away.

This morning as I finished my yoga in the pose of a tree, arms stretched up over my had as if praying to heaven, one knee drawn up into my groin, I faced the picture window, looking out on the peach tree that spreads it branches to cover half the yard. It is the same peach that started as a thrown-out seed, the summer I was about sixteen.

I was amazed to receive this quiet perspective on my life, the unused clothespins dangling on the line in the foreground, this quiet majesty meeting me in Namaste.

I am a peach tree. The fruit I am not bearing at present is the quiet perspective a single yoga posture gives to me. It used to be boring and stifling to come home. Now it is quietly fulfilling. I have let go of the expectations. I am here because I am related. Everything recedes and proceeds from this moment.

My mother and I are in her kitchen examining the plants in the window above the sink. It is not a bay window, but the plants are elevated on a glass shelf. My mother removes an African violet from its pot and holds it up to the light.

There are a few spots of mold on the surface of the root ball but otherwise it is healthy. She returns it to the shelf, naked. The plant and its blossoms are almost luminous.

I have two miniature pink roses in miniature plastic pots in both of my hands. I comment that I must transplant them soon. There is a whole row of plants, most of them my mother’s, all of which she has removed from the pots and replaced on the glass sill.

My mother has never been a gardener, nor has she kept houseplants, though she loves flowers. Since she’s gotten older and progressively retreated from the world, she no longer seems to nurture anything. She asks the same questions over and over and mumbles and hums under her breath.

The dream itself is transparent. The plants are transparent. My mother is transparent, and I am returning to my mother’s garden, putting my roses in the ground.

November 1995, transcribed from my journal on Mother’s Day, 2025