The view from my cup…memories. Although you might only see
an African violet, I see memories of my mother. I’ve never been quite sure why
people bemoan ‘turning into my mother’, or ‘sounding just like my mother.’ I
certainly could turn into, or sound like, any number of people far less
admirable than my own mother.
This African violet has been alive now for quite a number of
years. It’s thriving in a flower pot that belonged to my mother. She nurtured
her violets, just as I find myself doing. Repotting from time to time in fresh
soil, trimming away older, withering leaves. And the cardinal rule of violet
care, always water from the bottom. Violet shy away from getting their leaves
wet. (Would that make them shrinking violets? Is that where the phrase
originated?)
This morning the temperature was in the 30’s. I’m back to
wearing a sweat jacket over my pajamas to have my morning coffee. The flower
pots are sitting on my porches, empty, waiting for temperature to even out
before being filled to overflowing with annuals.
This year we are planting a new tree in front of our house,
to replace a large holly that succumbed to an eighteen inch snowfall and frigid
temperatures a few winters ago. I’m thinking perhaps a weeping cherry with a
bed of white candytuft underneath and lavender phlox spilling over the wall
bordering the driveway.
Even in flower selection, I tend to choose things we had
growing in our yard when I was a child. My pink, chubby hands learned to work
the soil, lovingly guided by my mother’s tanned and aged hands.
Today, I know many of my friends who, like their mothers
before them, have become good stewards of their land. Sometimes our garden
paths cross. A lilac bush from my mother’s garden now grows in my dear friend
Mary’s yard. Amid my friend’s spectacular floral display, a piece of my mother
lives on.
As we approach Mother’s Day, neither my friend Mary nor I
have our mothers with us any longer. But their love of flowers is now ours. We
both have grown sons of our own. So, boys, if you read this…buy your mother
some flowers this year, won’t you?
