The Mint Line
Mother’s Day feels like it is early this year. Like sudden frost, or cherry blossoms blooming too soon. The memory in my bones tells me this day is at least another week away. I’m not ready. And yet it is here. For me, every day is Mother’s Day, moving through one emotion after the other to get past the grief while dancing in the sun. If my mom were here, she’d have compassion for my ongoing struggle, but she’d want me to dance already. Onward and upward, I can hear her say.
Yesterday morning, I worked at a Mother’s Day 5k/10k race in Alexandria. As I walked to my post along the course, I saw a cardinal. Crimson. It landed on the grass just off the path and stayed put. It didn’t fly away, even as I stood there and stared at it, and then followed as it flew to a nearby branch to hide before emerging once more. Was that my mom?
On my way back, after the race, I saw another cardinal. It could have been the same one from earlier. That one didn’t fly away either.
Seeing that cardinal reminded me that I’ll look for and read deep into these signs for the rest of my life. Even if it makes me crazy.
It also reminded me with a stab that Mother’s Day was always when we planted the garden, and I’m not ready this year. I’ve been waiting for the tree pollen to cede the stage to grass pollen, and it just hasn’t happened yet.
But today’s the day, and even if my mind isn’t ready, my heart is – it must be. I’ll prep the beds and pots. I’ll wash the pollen from the deck and weed out the dead branches and tendrils, leaving the palette ripe for planting.
Every year, at my parents’ house, Mother’s Day was the day. To clear the pollen from the porch and plant the garden. Our garden was in the backyard – Dad had built a raised bed framework. It was big enough to plant tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, thyme, and basil. In the beginning, we planted mint, too.
Mint in the ground. If you know, you know.
Crazy decision, yes, but mint is our memory. We must let it have its way from time to time; we don’t have a choice.
Dad was quite a talented carpenter – self-taught. His engineering mind understood the language of building. I still have the book he used to learn. He built bookshelves in every house we lived in. At my childhood home in Alexandria, he built a deck and the brick patio down below. That deck was a fortress, I remember my mom saying that it would survive anything – it’s still there today, I’ve checked.
My mom planted mint next to the patio, and eventually, the roots sprouted up through the bricks. That was the beginning for me, the conception of the mint line, the lineage that grows right now outside my door.
My mom’s people were primarily farmers, although one was a pharmacist. I remember asking Grandma questions about the family and our ancestors. One by one, I asked what they did. Grandma said, “a farmer.” When I asked what another did, she said, “a farmer.” And then another - “a farmer, I guess,” she said with a slight shrug and smile.
Thus, the lineage tells me I was born knowing, but I can’t help feeling that the ones who really know aren’t with me anymore.
They are in the ether of my mind, like the mint that doesn’t die even when you try to uproot it because it takes over. I remember pulling up mint when it was bleeding too far into the garden. I wasn’t worried about killing it, because once you plant mint, there’s more where that came from.
My mom recalled how her grandfather worked in the garden with his shirt, tie, and hat. It was like going to church, it was faith. Ingrained and knowing. They didn’t have money, but they had memory, and they had the garden, which meant they had everything.
My mom always remembered how her grandma, Litha Mae, wore safety pins on her apron. Always. Constant. Like her grandaddy tending the garden. My mom was the oldest grandchild, and she was the apple of her grandparents’ eye.
The garden meant survival and abundance when there was nothing else. They ate meat once a week, mostly on a Sunday and it would last into the week. Mom always talked about stewed tomatoes, and how Grandma created anticipation and moment, whether there was abundance or lack thereof.
My mom knew who she was. She was not afraid of herself and the person she was born to be, and at times, the person she had to be to survive. All the while, she brought the stories into my childhood - her stories, Grandma’s, my great grandmother’s. Intertwined. Those stories are mine. They are me.
Which is why my mom isn’t gone. She’s in the ether, waiting, and the kettle’s on.
The respect and love she had for Grandma only grew over time, knowing how she survived – all the while creating a magical world which always seemed to lead back to the garden. They were scavengers of story, and stories take on deeper hues as our experience awakens. A hundred essays can’t contain everything I learned from my mom and the ways I miss her. But grief is the price for love. I’m learning to live in it.
The mint line will always survive winter’s frost fire.
My mom once asked Grandma, “how do you ever repay your parents?” She didn’t mean monetarily – she meant all of it. The love, the teaching, the constancy. That which no one can quantify or measure, the expansion that words can’t contain. Grandma told her, “You don’t. You pass it on.”
And so. Here I am. In my memory. In the mint.
I love you, Mama.
Until next week. Tend something today. — Annie Mo