Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow by Tara Austen Weaver
Authors: Tara Austen Weaver
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matter. It felt like something else was being planted that day, something that would grow in the girls for the rest of their lives.
When my sister-in-law came to pick them up, she sat on the grass in the sunshine and chatted a bit, as the girls changed back into their regular clothes. She told us what she had bought that day, her plans for the weekend, how happy she was to have such nice weather. But she never picked up a trowel or garden gloves. Even though the lawn she sat on was marred with dandelions, even though there was more than enough work to go around, she never jumped in.
Maybe we didn’t make room for her; maybe we never invited her in. Maybe we should have. But then again, she never offered. It’s hard to know where the lines are drawn.
—
Abby had been almost one when my mother left Seattle the first time, after a year of trying to live close to my brother and his new family. After she left she visited frequently, but still she worried her granddaughter wouldn’t remember her, that she might die without Abby knowing who she was. When Cate was born, that fear doubled.
This may sound extreme or paranoid, but my mother has only a single memory of her own mother. Everything theyshared in the first three years of her life—hugs and lullabies and scraped knees and first teeth and bath time—is lost to the limitations of a child’s mind and a death come too soon. My mother didn’t want history to repeat itself.
“If I die before they remember me,” she often asked in those days, “will you tell them how much I loved them?”
“Of course I will.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
In those days, when my mother visited Seattle to see her grandchildren, she brought books. On the inside cover she always inscribed the same message. It was what she told the girls on the phone from California, whenever they could be persuaded to talk to her:
Grandma loves you all the time
.
As the girls grew, they learned to parrot my mother, they said it together at the end of phone conversations or when she was leaving after a visit. Their high, chirpy voices blended with her own low tones to make a chant, a chorus, a call to arms. She would start and they would join in: “Grandma loves you all the time.”
They thought it was a game, a joke. Only I knew the sad, scared place it came from. Only I knew what it really meant: a little girl with a single memory of her own mother. A little girl who did not remember ever being loved.
Even if she is not here, even when you cannot see her, even if she dies, even if you don’t remember her: Grandma loves you all the time
.
—
For a number of years, when my brother and I were young, we drove every summer from our home in California to the mountains of Colorado. There was a graduate school just starting up in Boulder; my mother was teaching there.
Mostly what I remember is the drive: long and unending,my brother and me in the back of my mom’s old Volvo. We ate plums along the way, throwing the pits out the almond-shaped rear windows that were held open by a funny little hinge. Our pits made tracks of slime on the outside of the car that stayed there until someone washed them off in Colorado three days later.
We sang in the car too. Once we were out of radio range, we sang songs our mother taught us or that we knew from school. We got so good we could sing three-part rounds, each person staggering their start time and going around and around and around until we were dizzy with the music, our high voices combining sweetly, gracefully. You might have thought there were angels singing in the backseat.
We were angels and we were devils. We sang and we fought. There was a line down the center of the backseat and no wartime border was ever so well defended. The mere hint of a finger straying over the line was grounds for outright attack or wailing.
“Moooommmmm, he’s on
my
side!”
But even devils get tired. Eventually my brother grew sleepy. When he did he snuggled up
When my sister-in-law came to pick them up, she sat on the grass in the sunshine and chatted a bit, as the girls changed back into their regular clothes. She told us what she had bought that day, her plans for the weekend, how happy she was to have such nice weather. But she never picked up a trowel or garden gloves. Even though the lawn she sat on was marred with dandelions, even though there was more than enough work to go around, she never jumped in.
Maybe we didn’t make room for her; maybe we never invited her in. Maybe we should have. But then again, she never offered. It’s hard to know where the lines are drawn.
—
Abby had been almost one when my mother left Seattle the first time, after a year of trying to live close to my brother and his new family. After she left she visited frequently, but still she worried her granddaughter wouldn’t remember her, that she might die without Abby knowing who she was. When Cate was born, that fear doubled.
This may sound extreme or paranoid, but my mother has only a single memory of her own mother. Everything theyshared in the first three years of her life—hugs and lullabies and scraped knees and first teeth and bath time—is lost to the limitations of a child’s mind and a death come too soon. My mother didn’t want history to repeat itself.
“If I die before they remember me,” she often asked in those days, “will you tell them how much I loved them?”
“Of course I will.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
In those days, when my mother visited Seattle to see her grandchildren, she brought books. On the inside cover she always inscribed the same message. It was what she told the girls on the phone from California, whenever they could be persuaded to talk to her:
Grandma loves you all the time
.
As the girls grew, they learned to parrot my mother, they said it together at the end of phone conversations or when she was leaving after a visit. Their high, chirpy voices blended with her own low tones to make a chant, a chorus, a call to arms. She would start and they would join in: “Grandma loves you all the time.”
They thought it was a game, a joke. Only I knew the sad, scared place it came from. Only I knew what it really meant: a little girl with a single memory of her own mother. A little girl who did not remember ever being loved.
Even if she is not here, even when you cannot see her, even if she dies, even if you don’t remember her: Grandma loves you all the time
.
—
For a number of years, when my brother and I were young, we drove every summer from our home in California to the mountains of Colorado. There was a graduate school just starting up in Boulder; my mother was teaching there.
Mostly what I remember is the drive: long and unending,my brother and me in the back of my mom’s old Volvo. We ate plums along the way, throwing the pits out the almond-shaped rear windows that were held open by a funny little hinge. Our pits made tracks of slime on the outside of the car that stayed there until someone washed them off in Colorado three days later.
We sang in the car too. Once we were out of radio range, we sang songs our mother taught us or that we knew from school. We got so good we could sing three-part rounds, each person staggering their start time and going around and around and around until we were dizzy with the music, our high voices combining sweetly, gracefully. You might have thought there were angels singing in the backseat.
We were angels and we were devils. We sang and we fought. There was a line down the center of the backseat and no wartime border was ever so well defended. The mere hint of a finger straying over the line was grounds for outright attack or wailing.
“Moooommmmm, he’s on
my
side!”
But even devils get tired. Eventually my brother grew sleepy. When he did he snuggled up
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