by Heather Watkins

Created on: August 12, 2009   Last Updated: October 23, 2009

"Gardens have memories," she told me, her voice shaky and tired from the effects of chemotherapy. I was too young to really understand the rigors of her treatments, but her statement made me wonder if this was going to be one of the days where she seemed to be on a far different planet than the one I inhabited. I was about five years old at this point, but even I knew that there was no way a garden could remember anything. It was simply a piece of land with some seeds that had taken root and produced flowers and vegetables. It had no memory.

She must have seen my curious glance over my shoulder, because she laughed that seemingly halfhearted, dusty laugh that never sounded the way it once had, back when she was healthy. "They do," she insisted, and I nodded to appease her. My father had told me not to disagree with her when she was having a bad day, since it wouldn't connect for her and she wouldn't be able to understand me.

"Come here," she said quietly, and although I'd been having a good time pulling the weeds over by the tulips, I obeyed. She was sitting as she usually did, in one of the old wicker lawn chairs my father had brought out for her. She was covered in a blanket although it was nearly June, and she appeared to be cold, but insisted that she was fine when I asked. My father had been bringing her out as much as he could, simply because she loved sitting near the garden. She hadn't been able to work in it since she'd gotten so sick, but she loved just being near it. It was one of the few things that made her happy.

That day, I climbed into her lap because she insisted on it. My father had told me not to, that she wasn't strong and couldn't hold me, but she asked me to and scoffed when I refused. When I was on her lap, it struck me that she didn't feel any different, although all the grown ups kept telling me she was "frail." I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but as we sat there with the sun beaming down and the scent of her lilies and azaleas gently surrounding us, she felt as strong as she ever had, and her arms around me felt like I remembered. Thinner, but no less strong.

"The flowers remember to come back every year, and the dirt remembers to make room for them," she told me, looking out over the expanse of sunflowers, roses, and other plants that my father had planted for her. The garden was nearly half an acre, on a bit of abandoned land across from our back gate, and my mother had been out there constantly before the cancer took hold.

I can't remember now if I answered her, or ever said anything about the garden having a memory again. She passed in September of that year, right after the flowers had stopped blooming. To this day, I know she was in her right mind when she told me. Every year, the flowers do come back, and the dirt always seems to know to make room for them. For me, memories of her will always be entwined with the flowers as they bloom.

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