Gardening will make mom happy

Mother’s Day is coming up this weekend. I am planning a trip to go see my mom on her special day. I last went to visit her at the end of April. I thought she looked terrific. She was walking faster and without wincing at every step. I thought to myself that the physical therapy was working.
A couple days later she called me to say she had stumbled. Her therapist was walking with her outside when a gust of wind blew her hat away and knocked her off balance. Her walker tilted but didn’t fall. Thankfully the therapist caught her before she tumbled to the ground. She said she didn’t have any bruises but she was sore.
Stories like that make me sad. I miss the mother who could toss hay bales around like they were toys and climb up and down the ladder to the hayloft like it was nothing. These days a simple walk in her front yard is fraught with danger. In addition to the worry that she will get hurt is the fear that this is my future.
I must go shopping for flowers to plant in her flowerbeds. She can no longer bend down to do this herself. I remember when the two of us would load up the wheelbarrow with “good dirt” from the pasture and haul it over to the tractor tire in the side yard. She had painted the tire silver. We would work the nutrient rich soil into the remains of last year’s flowers before filling the tire with pansies. It seemed that every farm in the area had a tractor tire in the front yard. They were always painted silver and overflowed with flowers. I haven’t seen one of those in years.
My brothers and I will probably weed her flowerbed while we are there. I didn’t do it last time because I had some kind of 24-hour bug and felt miserable. But I had promised her I would be there for my youngest brother’s birthday and so felt obligated to go. I think the illness was in reaction to being exposed to an overdose of cigarette smoke the day before but I’m not sure.
Her irises were just starting to bloom at the end of April. Hers are much bigger and sturdier than ours.  She is dismayed that thistles have invaded the blue flowers some people refer to as flags. The problem is that thistles have an extensive root system. So that when I yank off the part that shows, the roots are just chuckling underground because they know they will grow back quickly. The only thing that will kill them is an herbicide but herbicides will also kill the irises so the prickly plants win.
Nevertheless, we will yank out all the thistles we can find. Mom will point out the ones we miss. I know she would prefer that we plant pansies but pansies don’t do well in heat. She would also prefer that we perform the planting, weeding and other gardening chores far more often than we do. I can’t keep up with all the weeding in my own flowerbeds, let alone hers.
A love of flowers is just one of the things that connect us. We both remember things that others have forgotten or never knew. I rely on her memory to fill in gaps in the family genealogy. Her memories of long ago are more easily recalled than more recent events. There are stories I have heard a thousand times that she tells as if I had never heard them before.
I try, not very successfully, to ignore the comments that hurt my feelings. I try to be understanding when she asks me to explain something confusing like Social Security, then tells me she doesn’t believe me. I try not to be hurt when she makes a rude comment about my weight, my clothes or my hair. I reason that no matter what she says, she is still my mother and I love her. I try to remember that there area a lot of people who are going through life without a mother. I try to remember that not all mothers love their children.
I am thankful that my mother is the woman she is. This Mother’s Day is her day and I will do whatever I can to make it as special as she is.

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