By Gaia Holmes
Your mother is harvesting seeds. She spends hours in the garden gathering them in the late summer sun. She’s so immersed in the task that she keeps letting the kettle boil dry, forgets to listen to the news, leaves the phone ringing, favors quick meals of Bakewell tarts or bananas that she eats with grubby hands by the rose bush which clings onto the scant pink rags of August’s last briars.
Your mother shakes seeds from poppy heads as if shaking pepper from a pepper pot, gently scrapes black, improbable specks of life from claggy pods with the soft edge of a butter knife.
She fills small brown envelopes with them, writes their names on the front in spindly script: marigold, rosa rugosa, foxglove, lunaria, hollyhock, aquilegia.
Your mother is convinced she’s going to die soon, says she can feel it in her creaking, crumbling bones. You sense that she is not, but you go along with her, humor her pending end.
One evening at her kitchen table, your mother, fingers still busy, tells you that she is preparing your inheritance, labelling it up. And it will be those seeds, those potent paper packets rattling with hope, that she leaves behind: those understated heirlooms, those possible gardens of Paradise, those golden orchards of her mind.
Gaia Holmes is a creative writing tutor and pet/house sitter and the author of three poetry collections, Dr James Graham’s Celestial Bed, Lifting The Piano With One Hand, and Where The Road Runs Out, and a collection of short stories called He Used To Do Dangerous Things, all published by Comma Press.
Image by Wolfgang Hasselmann courtesy of Unsplash
Hope. Possible. Potent. All the promise of seed + love.. Thank you.
I am so happy you shared your beautiful writing, Gaia. I read this piece three times to feel the beautiful light and focus. I especially liked the details of what your mother forgot while focused on her task. The grubby banana, the soft edge of the butter knife, the spindly script. I was with you in your observation and it was delightful.
…”the scant pink rags of August’s last briars.” Evokes the beauty and ravages of aging. ❤️
Delectable, rich, immersive. Makes me want to let the kettle boil dry.
Lovely
Thank you for this lovely piece that brought back warm memories of my own mother. She saved seeds from her vegetable gardens, cataloguing field peas, green beans, okra, and green pepper, which joined other seed or young plants scoured at local farm stores. Heirlooms indeed!
We all want to leave something useful behind for our children and it is so wonderful to read about the care and purpose your mother applied to saving you a legacy of seeds.
I love the last paragraph especially ….those golden orchards of her mind!
❤️❤️❤️ Beautiful, touching
It’s the flow, rhythm that made this work
Gaia,
I love the first paragraph beginning with the words, “Your mother.” The use of the word, “your,” is something I have never used when writing about my mother, But I will certainly try it now. The details in the opening are a rich visual. “…favors quick meals of Bakewell tarts or bananas that she eats with grubby hands…” Such interesting details. So specific. And the word “grubby,” stays with me throughout. She is like a child who doesn’t want to stop playing and come in for dinner.
“The soft edge of a butter knife,” is so perfect it gave me chills. You make every sentence, every word, matter. Heirloom, is gorgeous and moving and lovely.
Lovely. I am not surprised to read that this writer is a poet. Gorgeous images and wonderful sounds throughout.
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing.
Really beautiful. Made my day.
Just beautiful and evocative.
I can’t tell you how much I love this. It is priceless. So well written.