Photo by Photo by Margaret Myers |
Welcome to my Garden
Welcome to my garden
It is a mother’s garden
Tended with love and care
Enter my garden
And it looks like any other
Shades of lavender, tender green, blushing pinks
But look a little closer
Beside the familiar are the unordinary
My tools to fight off the beasties which devour
the young,
the tender,
the vulnerable
With an insatiable hunger
Like the garden pests of slime and mouth.
My garden is different and yet you might not have noticed
It requires a special patience,
a kind of not knowing,
a deep letting go,
a courage
Are you a gardener of like kind?
As I cultivate my garden
watching my children grow
These necessary implements are for my CF child,
A delicate lily who requires a gardener’s arsenal
You may have never tended a garden such as this
Or perhaps you have
This is where
The Miracle Grow is applied at every meal
Chemical fertilizers and pesticides abound
Where tears are the season’s first watering
Where the pulsating compressors and
A child’s persistent cough fills a mother’s weary ear
Where there is a name to your child’s condition, cystic fibrosis
And it is all behind the garden gate,
So you probably did not know.
It is summer now in my garden
I have loved and worked hard and used my tools religiously
And my lily has grown
Holding my hand
Making me laugh
Hugging me tightly
Hugging me often
Loving me so dearly
She is breaking the odds
Blossoming through her struggles
Beauty and Wisdom
give her Grace.
May it forever be summer
When the glorious sun and rich earth
nurtures my exquisite lily
And her sister of gentle beauty.
May it forever be summer in this garden
It is a mother’s prayer
May this season never change
In my garden of love.
Yet this is the way
Seasons do change
Gardens mature
And love knows this
So if you also see me gardening during
the harvest moon
the winter solstice
the emerging spring
Help me find the path
Gently remind me of
the special patience
the kind of not knowing
the deep letting go
the courage.
Hold my hand
Make me laugh
Hug me tightly
Hug me often
Love me dearly.
Robin Modlin, July, 2002
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