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- An illuminating discovery about family similarities
An illuminating discovery about family similarities
- By Review Staff
- Published 07/27/2010
- Commentary
- Unrated
I’ve got a great garden this year. Every year I keep promising myself that this is the year, this time I won’t kill it, this time I’ll be sure to actually plant one . . . and so far everything looks good.
One Sunday I spent the entire afternoon in my garden pulling weeds. That probably seems excessive, but I was literally on my hands and knees picking small weeds. For the longest time the weeds weren’t growing very fast. Then we got all that moisture and then it heated up and boy let me tell you, those weeds shot up like . . . well, weeds.
I had some baby carrots coming up and you could just barely make out their little tops poking through the weeds. I very carefully and gently got on the ground and pulled each offender from around my grateful and relieved young’ens. I could almost hear them thanking me.
I suppose I might look insane to anyone just looking over the fence. There I am barefoot and grinning like an idiot while getting a nasty sunburn and drinking beer. All of a sudden I straightened up and had an epiphany.
A couple summers ago my husband, my children and my brother and I all went down to my mom’s out in Medicine Valley to help her pick up hay. I drove the truck and I could see her in the rear view mirror just smiling and looking so happy. I grumbled to my brother “What’s she so happy for? We’re working and sweating like pigs.”
He told me it was because she actually had help this time and that makes her feel good. Oh, I see, but I didn’t fully appreciate it.
Now here I am out in the blistering heat getting sunburned while pulling small obnoxious weeks and being happy about it.
Why? Well because for once I have the nice garden I always try to get. My intentions are usually good but my follow up is weak, or the ground is bad or I started too late. The last four years have all been duds.
So now I understand what my mom must have been feeling.
A few weeks ago she and my step-dad came up to visit us. She was telling us a story about when she reseeded the pasture. Mom’s really tough, and she does a lot of things the way people used to do it way back in the day.
So she’s out reseeding this huge field just by walking and throwing the seed she’s carrying in a bag. She joked about how she was Annie grass seed. Now I have this mental picture in my mind of my mom, her hair is in a ponytail and she’s grinning while throwing grass seed. I remember thinking to myself that I didn’t want to ever be like my mother.
Now, I’m proud to realize that I’m becoming more and more like her. I’m especially delighted that we had some of the same goofy quirks that make us who we are.
One Sunday I spent the entire afternoon in my garden pulling weeds. That probably seems excessive, but I was literally on my hands and knees picking small weeds. For the longest time the weeds weren’t growing very fast. Then we got all that moisture and then it heated up and boy let me tell you, those weeds shot up like . . . well, weeds.
I had some baby carrots coming up and you could just barely make out their little tops poking through the weeds. I very carefully and gently got on the ground and pulled each offender from around my grateful and relieved young’ens. I could almost hear them thanking me.
I suppose I might look insane to anyone just looking over the fence. There I am barefoot and grinning like an idiot while getting a nasty sunburn and drinking beer. All of a sudden I straightened up and had an epiphany.
A couple summers ago my husband, my children and my brother and I all went down to my mom’s out in Medicine Valley to help her pick up hay. I drove the truck and I could see her in the rear view mirror just smiling and looking so happy. I grumbled to my brother “What’s she so happy for? We’re working and sweating like pigs.”
He told me it was because she actually had help this time and that makes her feel good. Oh, I see, but I didn’t fully appreciate it.
Now here I am out in the blistering heat getting sunburned while pulling small obnoxious weeks and being happy about it.
Why? Well because for once I have the nice garden I always try to get. My intentions are usually good but my follow up is weak, or the ground is bad or I started too late. The last four years have all been duds.
So now I understand what my mom must have been feeling.
A few weeks ago she and my step-dad came up to visit us. She was telling us a story about when she reseeded the pasture. Mom’s really tough, and she does a lot of things the way people used to do it way back in the day.
So she’s out reseeding this huge field just by walking and throwing the seed she’s carrying in a bag. She joked about how she was Annie grass seed. Now I have this mental picture in my mind of my mom, her hair is in a ponytail and she’s grinning while throwing grass seed. I remember thinking to myself that I didn’t want to ever be like my mother.
Now, I’m proud to realize that I’m becoming more and more like her. I’m especially delighted that we had some of the same goofy quirks that make us who we are.