Over the last several years I have gotten more and more into gardening. It makes me appreciate the ebb and flow of life. There is no rushing a seedling into a plant, and there is no rushing a plant to flower. You provide the plant what it needs to stay alive and it rewards you by growing and blooming...in its own time. The only way to do it wrong is to not provide the plant what it asks for. Pretty easy, huh?
The process gets me thinking. Mother Nature and the universe provide the human embryo what it needs to grow. The mother is a vessel for that miracle, but she is really a bystander in the process. The fates and nature will grow the embryo into a tiny human. When we are born, we are helpless, relying only on our mothers for nourishment, comforting, and warmth. Motherhood is a beautiful experience - I cannot imagine the unbridled joy of seeing your child for the first time. The white light of peace and contentment has to be visible. Seeing this with friends, family members, hell - even on TV - it seems that all is right with the world at that moment.
What I don't understand is the ability of a Mother to decide that the child they gave birth to, the child they nurtured, worried about, taught, laughed with is no longer their child. I can only use a few examples in my life to compare that relationship to. My step daughter, my pets, and my gardens. Never have I looked at any of those precious examples and thought...hmm...screw it. I can't turn the step daughter away anymore than I could not feed one of my pets or watch a plant whiter and die. Yet, I have a mother out in the world who does not believe that I should be her daughter. As much as that hurts me, it really calls attention to an emptiness in my life. I miss having a mother...I think. I am not entirely sure I ever had one, but the relationships I see with other mother/daughters make me wish I had one.
As I garden, I am reminded how much I have to give the world. I can grow FOOD, flowers, herbs. I even know what to plant with other plants...I have beautiful gardens. But I do not have a mother, sister, father.....I am a transplant volunteer - growing as big as possible, but no one can trace me back to a starting point.
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