2001-10-13 - 10:20 a.m.

My mother accepts the crowd�s tributes, and her husband�s ribbings, with quiet grace. Friends and relatives gather from all over to say Happy Birthday and thanks for being you. She responds with a thank you, then changes the subject.

Recognition has never been what she lives for. Mom doesn�t ask for much; a moral life, a loving and upstanding family, a chance to leave the world a bit better than she found it. And a small patch of land in her quiet home town that she can make her own.

Mark and I are taking a page from her book this afternoon, shifting from a morning of high hopes to the simple task of gardening. It�s been a weekend of the best-laid plans, the elaborate surprise of the party, my orchestrated birthday phone call from Kevin�s room, intended to delay her arrival until the guests arrived, my heart pounding as I kept up the charade. And then a flurry of enthusiastic greetings and smalltalk, attempts to make up for months of lost time in a few short breaths.

My visits tend to turn quality family time into a moral imperative. This morning, the guests departed and the empty bottles collected, my brothers and I found ourselves together and in need of doing something memorable. First we tried kayaking, only the kayak rental place we visited was closed. We tried a bike ride, only the tube of Mark�s bike, replaced hurriedly in Kevin�s basement, exploded with a matter-of-fact pop as we glided down that first hilly road. So we gave up, walked to the beach and had some lunch. And Mark and I headed home with Mom to lend a hand on the garden.

It�s just as well. A simple afternoon like this may be less exciting than a kayaking expedition, but its moments are just as true. It�s real time with Mom, stripped of the artificiality of a party, a chance to see her self expressed through watering and weeding and planting. The garden is small and simple, its boundaries well-defined between the driveway and the hedges. It�s enough.

The three of us dig, plant and water, Mark setting the pace. His shovel reshapes the boundaries of this garden into a perfect rectangle. He feels like our favorite storybook hero, who worked furiously to dig out all four corners of the new town hall, with his trusty steam shovel, before night fell.

�Quick! Before the sun goes down!� I say, though there�s plenty of daylight left for our task. He laughs.

My job is to turn the soil in one section and prepare it for the arrival of new plants. I pluck out the weeds and turn the dirt with a trowel that Mom�s used since I was a child. It reminds me of following around her as she gardened years ago, holding a sprig of lemon thyme or oregano up to my nose to sniff.

The garden was a mystery to me then, and some of that mystery lingers today as I turn the soil. At first I weed uncertainly, afraid I�ll mistake some precious flower for a weed.

But then I realize it doesn�t matter much; gardening�s an intuitive activity and I don�t have to worry. I suddenly realize that all my life I�ve been going about gardening all wrong, I�ve always hated it because I�ve never understood it, never let myself become lost in it because I was afraid of what I could be doing wrong, because I didn�t know a flower from a weed. But now I�m more confident; I�m ready to take the weeding into my own hands, no matter if I do it wrong sometimes. You never know what everything is in a garden, you just make an educated guess and see how it works out. I run my hands through the turned soil, spreading and flattening it into an even bed. It soothes me.

I come across a tiny plant off on its own, its flower curled in a funny spiral shape. She tells me she didn�t plant it there; it just decided to grow. At first she considered taking it out, but instead she let it be. It seemed nice growing off on its own like that.

Mom points to another plant growing nearby � a Chicago lily, it�s called.

�Every time I look at that one,� she tells me, �I get reminded of you.�

I like that. I�m glad that even though I�ll have to rush off tomorrow and I won�t be back for a long time, perhaps her work on the garden can be colored with a memory of me. I know she�s thinking of me anyway, trying to wish me well and not worry too much. But it�s nice to know there�s a Chicago lily in her garden, reminding her of me, and a small corner of dirt that�s been smoothed by my hand.

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