by Susan Morton

Created on: November 17, 2008

I spent two years at my grandmothers in Walhalla, South Carolina in the mountains. Its the western tip of the state, the tail end of the Mountains. I was a very tiny child, and in my imagination I was a fairy in my grandmother Boone's garden. I hid under the giant sunflowers whose faces always faced the sun no matter what time of the day. My grandmother would come out into the garden and say:"I don't see Susie anywhere so the fairies must have taken her." Which just tickled me to think I really could not be seen and invisible at that.

She would weed the garden in the morning sun, and as she weeded she would tell me stories of fairies and elves. She was Irish you see, and her mother Great Grandmother Mulkey was born in Ireland. So a lot of the old country's stories came with her. I with my tutu on hid under the flowers watching my grandmother and the butterflies flying around. I was pretending that I really was a fairy, but was watching grandmother tend with loving care her garden.

My grandmother use to say to me that this was the earth that nourished us, that God made it for us to take care of. She said to me,"Susie where ever you are don't forget to wash your hands and face when you come back in." So in my grandmothers garden I learned the most valuable lesson that she could teach me , that the earth is ours to take care of. To respect the earth when working or playing, in my case pretending to be a fairy.

I knew that she knew I was there. It became for me one of the best memories of a garden I ever had. I could watch and learn from her what all the people on the earth should know the value of the earth. With loving hands she tended that garden, and my love for the earth flowed from my hands to it every time we were there. Years later, I had been busy raising my own children in the city. My only release or healing was my garden in the back yard. It was not big or fancy, but merely that of herbs that grandmother taught me. So that every time I put my hands into the earth I could feel the creators love flow into me.

When I found out that I had cancer, I ran into the back yard and pushed my hands into the earth. As if, I could find my grandmother there, remembering under the sunflowers. When I did not exist except for fairy dust, and she so young and sweet. Now all things seem to die, so that I looked to my garden with tearful eyes. Then it hit me that here in the dirt where I began, is where I will heal.

So every day I went out to my garden after work, and thrust my hands into the earth and prayed for grandmother to feel me there. I closed my eyes and smelled sunflower petals, and the hum of the bees nearby. I don't know how long I was there, but my daughter came out of the house and shook me and said:"Momma, its dark please come in." That garden where I was a child, and my grandmother had been with me, and I sometimes catch myself seeing her garden in my head, with sunflowers as far as you can see.

Believe it or not, I went from terminal to fit, and my garden grew so fine. That instead of crying I sing songs even under the moonlit skies. There in the mountains in my mind, is where my grandmother lies. It is her garden I go to when life had been unkind. I dream of sunflowers far and wide, of the bees whose hives do grow, it saved my life my grandmother did..under sunflowers in her garden that follows me where ever I go.. She will always live where I till the soil, and when I die put my ashes nearby, the garden where sunflowers grow.

Learn more about this author, Susan Morton.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.