My mother’s element, my mommy’s being, my mum’s poem was garden. She was a couple of
port wine magnolia mulched and fed and reliable with enameled green leaves and swooning
blossoms come spring. She was a bed of mignonette lettuce, a row of grosse lisse tomatoes.
She was a Japanese maple tree struggling to become beautiful on a therapy of red dirt, pills of
sheep shit, and obstinance. She was scornful crab grass, dandelion, and paspalum. She was an
uncorralled collation of wonga wonga vine, old man’s beard, and dusky coral pea. My mother’s
human body and her human mind gave less attention to themselves than to the gardens she
grew as signs of her true being, and in those gardens, my garden mother and the garden she
made to show her being to the world became one. “Where’s Mom?” we said. “Garden.”
“What is Mum?” we said not for we didn’t want the garden our mother was. We wanted the
mommy she was always becoming.