Meadow clary

Of (vandalizing) flower beds, life seasons and their gifts.

Look at you. You’re sitting up all by yourself for the first time. Straight back, straight neck, chin up, eyes everywhere, your tiny bald head bobbing you back into balance at every change of direction. You look like a very inquisitive, very wobbly, very pink jelly dessert with large starry eyes and a wide gummy smile.

We are sitting by the flower beds under the washing line in your grandparents’ garden. The shadows of clean laundry waltz across the grass, holding you under a spell. Until you spot something else — a feathery bush of flowers in an irrestible shade of pale lavender is waving at you only a few steps away. Let’s go get a closer look, shall we? And up close and personal you go — you greet the flowers with a high-pitched gurgle of approval, then proceed to sink your pudgy pink fingers deep in your grandmother’s beloved nepetas. Or is it some kind of sage? Not sure, we’ll ask Gamma when she comes out. Whatever its name, the next minute you’re folded in half, face deep in the bush, arms flapping about like uncoordinated wings, butt and legs somehow still firmly planted on the grass — standard baby voodoo trickery. I fish you out and prop you back upright — when you emerge you’re chewing on lilac petals, unperturbed.

Late afternoon sunlight casts a coppery shimmer over your sparse auburn hair as you comb enraptured through the bush, a sprinkle of tiny flowers gathering in your lap like confetti. You have petals even between your toes. My my, you are thoroughly enjoying this.

I cup my hand around the roundness of your head. How long until your hair becomes so thick that you’ll no longer feel the warmth of my hand when I run it softly from your forehead to the nape of your neck? When did it happen with your sister? I can’t remember whether there was an exact moment — simply one day I noticed. One day I realized there was more hair than skin under my caress…

When leafing through my old photo albums before becoming a mother myself, childhood appeared to unfold at a blissfully languid pace — the details of my early days lovingly chronicled through the enchanted eyes of a first-time mother filled page after page after page. Only now I realize that the dreamy fragments of life crystallized in those familiar photographs actually span over a mere handful of months, sometimes weeks.

When your sister came, I thought everything would last longer. I thought we would have more time — pages and pages and pages of time…. Only yesterday she was the rosy-cheeked baby learning to sit up by herself in this very garden. And look at her now — singing and twirling around us, kissing flowers, collecting feathers, and shooing imaginary dragons away from her pebble cakes. But what feels like yesterday, in reality is two summers ago.

Two summers ago was the season of baby Elowen — you were but a distant hope, then. This summer is your season of learning to sit up and rake through grandma’s flowerbeds. This summer is her season of learning how to do somersaults and spot trout in the river. In two summers’ time it will be your season of hopping and trout-spotting and her season of…well, I don’t know, I am curious to see what that summer will bring for her. For us.

Because how beautiful, how hearth-breakingly beautiful is it to witness our timelines weave together within the space of the same summer? To know that although the time of her baby days is over, I get to live her sprightly toddler days while holding you in my arms?

Every season brings its gifts and, to give us space to honor them fully, it takes something away with it. And while I look forward to seeing you grow and become yourself day after day, today I am in no rush.

So take your time, my baby, take your time. We have an entire bed of meadow clary to dig up this summer.

With all my love,

Mama