I knew I wanted to write about the garden this week, but didn’t expect the post to go in this direction. I think it shows how plants and natural elements can mix with memories of people in profound ways.
Part 1
Last weekend as my family walked along a trail in the Marin Headlands, we came across an uprooted tree. The kids were quite a bit ahead of us, and we watched as they stared at the massive roots turned sideways on an old Monterey cypress. They moved along, and as Mike and I walked by we stopped to stare as well. “What could have made it tip over?” Mike questioned out loud. The possibilities: strong wind, shallow roots, a soil not conducive to having the roots grow deep an become stable.. all possibilities that are not only possibilities for the tree falling over, but act as analogies to why humans sometimes are uprooted.
Our Little Blue Seattle House had a few trees of note. One of them, a Japanese Stewartia, is highly valued for its delicately peeling bark, its tall yet gracefully narrow stature, and the white flowers with buttery yellow centers that come out and bloom in late June/early July, when many of the gorgeous flowers are starting to hunker down for the long dry sunny days of summer. On the other side of the small front yard, the Camellia, likely over 50 years old, was what we called “the salad tree” because when the petals all fell at once it was as if nature was serving us a bowl of roughage that was just overwhelming (and difficult to clean).
The Japanese Maples in the backyard were the birth trees for my kids. When my daughter was young enough to still fit in a little bouncy chair I grabbed a shovel one afternoon and planted the tree while she watched me. The tree is now 14 years old and has finally fulfilled its purpose of screening my neighbor’s towering garage and shade the deck. Another Japanese Maple was planted for my son. Since it was planted in a more shady corner, for a few years it struggled to survive but eventually it grew high enough to reach the light it so desperately needed.
Part 2
After not wearing earrings for over a couple of years, I’ve started wearing them again. When I started digging in all of my jewelry boxes, I started going deeper and deeper into some unused drawers and discovered some ziplock bags of costume jewelry. Put away immediately a few years ago, I started to pore over everything and realized how many of the pairs were antique, unique, and lovely. I started wearing some of them. I gave some jewelry to my daughter. Mike didn’t remember any of it, but I would tell him if I was wearing something of hers.
The backstory to this jewelry wearing is that my mom-in-law and I didn’t really get along all that great. We never fought—our distaste usually wasn’t overt—but we just generally criticized each other to anyone that would listen. I tried to get her gifts of perfume and jewelry that went unworn. I got guilt over the infrequency of phone calls from her son and grandkids. One time at a family gathering a relative overheard my mom-in-law’s critiques of everything about me, and made a crystal clear decision to spare a little bit of my feelings when she told someone else to serve coffee to her “because if Lorraine does it, she’ll probably complain about it”.
Last week I finished reading “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” by Lisa See, and I’m not quite sure why but I kind of started to understand the closeness my mom-in-law had with Mike. Then I realized after closing the book that she was gone, probably the one human aside from the kids who could possibly claim to love my husband more than I do. She loved my kids. To not have a person that loved my family was suddenly a sadness that was much stronger than when I said good-bye at her funeral, crying selfishly over the fact that she wasted time hating on me instead of crying at the loss of her presence to my husband and kids.
While stepping thought the garden one autumn day, I came across a rock and remember how my mother-in-law used to say that she had a special affection for “rocks with character”. When I first met her I just thought she was a little quirky but now I know exactly what she means. So to honor part of the circle of life I placed one or two substantial rocks with character under the trees of her grandchildren, anchoring her place in my memories, and telling the kids about how much she would have loved to see them grow and get older.
I told Mike. I told him that surprisingly, I missed his Mom. I could see something in him feel more at peace. I feel more at peace.
Do you have a tree associated with a person? Do you miss your mom-in-law?
If you feel like something about this post resonated with you, please share!