Yesterday was Mother’s Day here in Italy and in America and although a piece of me knows that it’s a ridiculous excuse to sell roses at exorbitant prices in spite of the fact that they will die shortly after delivery, there is also a piece of me that would so have loved to spend the day with my daughter and stepdaughter, perhaps sharing a picnic and, okay, being told what a great mum I am. But my girls are in New York and I’m here in Tuscany. And, truthfully, I don’t need to be “honoured” for one day a year. I need what I have: to love and be loved by them 365 days a year. So let’s turn to the mother of us all: Mother Nature.

I’ve spent the last two weeks going back and forth between desk and garden. After a severe frost damaged the wisteria and jasmine some weeks ago, I went into a kind of mourning. After all we’ve gone through in the last year plus, I, like many of us, had counted on the bounty of Spring to lift my spirit only to have it extinguished every time I looked at the premature blossoms, freeze-dried on their stems. I thought of my stillborn daughter, Amy, and how those weeks and months of joyful anticipation turned into weeks and months of grief. After Amy died, I turned to gardening, first in pots and then when those survived and flourished I started a vegetable garden.

Here, not wanting to dwell in the sadness of my thwarted garden, yet not willing to give birth to a new novel – and grateful to no longer be able to birth another human being! – I decided to weed the blog. I have, including this one, written 370 essays in the last 10 years and have often been asked by readers if I would please publish a selection in that old-fashioned form called “a book.” For an obsessively industrious and discipled person I can be a lazy old cow. The thought of reading hundreds of essays, sorting them into the inevitable piles of “keep,” “chuck,” and “maybe,” just seemed overwhelming. But then this whole year of the bloody pandemic has been overwhelming so why not take on something that I actually have some control over and go along for the adventure. And what an adventure it is. Ten years of life captured in essays.

The word essay is interesting in that the definition we most often think of is as a noun referring to a piece of non-fiction writing. Its other definition is in the form of a verb, meaning to attempt, or to try. My essays are an attempt at discovering the ways in which unexamined thoughts affect the way we view reality. For instance when the recent frosts damaged my garden my first thought was how cruel Mother Nature is. Well, she is cruel if we expect her to be perfect. In that regard she is like all mothers, blamed for everything when reality doesn’t turn out the way we want it. Once I got that out of my system it made way for a second thought: that she was actually offering us an important lesson. The second thought seemed to be worth trying/essaying to understand.

When the covid vaccines were approved, we all (anti-vaxers aside) got excited and fooled ourselves into believing life would soon return to normal. In some places restrictions were lifted and where they weren’t, a large section of the population decided to hell with it and large gatherings began, often mask-free. Inevitably, infections began to rise again causing more lockdowns.

Much the same happened here in nature. An unseasonably warm early March convinced some plants and trees to start flowering before their time, only to be killed of by April’s frosts. Nature however, appears to learn faster than we humans. My garden which had received its annual hard pruning in early March said, hang on a minute. I could almost feel it retreat. At first it pissed me off. I wanted spring now, goddamn it. I began obsessively examining plants for signs of growth. Nothing. I felt like an angry teenager whose mother wouldn’t give me what I wanted when I wanted it. After a couple of weeks I finally accepted that it was out of my control and once I let go it opened up the space to explore my overgrown garden of essays.

By the end of the first week, I felt newly energized. Not only was I amazed to rediscover the journey Joel and I embarked on 10 years ago when we decided to spend more time in Europe, which eventually led to us moving here, but I am also beginning to discover what is lost and what is gained in the course of living. Some thoughts I had back then which I was convinced were set in stone have been sanded down or completely let go of. For instance, in 2011, when we sold our cottage by the sea I thought, for sure, I would never have another garden. Ten years later I am surrounded by the two acres of Mediterranean garden that I’ve been creating for the last seven years.

By the time I got to the essays from 2012 I felt so energized that I decided instead of sulking over the garden why not give it new life? Last week I planted nearly 50 new babies including 6 lavender, a bed of 24 basil, 7 jasmine vines, 8 cascading rosemary and various ceramic pots of geraniums and some white flowering vine the name of which escapes me. But here’s the truly amazing thing: the wisteria is re-blooming! I thought we’d be lucky if it even leafed out this year. Instead, it summoned courage and energy to rise up and give birth again. I too rose up again after Amy died and gave birth to my beautiful Isabel and 48 years later it is still a thrill to watch the ways in which she continues to blossom.

Gardening, writing and mothering have a lot in common. They all come from nothing. They all come with a certain amount of failure and disappointment; they’re full of surprises and rewards and all require constant attention. The age of the pandemic is also calling us to constant attention. The challenge is to not let it overwhelm us. Instead of waiting for it to be over, it’s time to accept that this is our new reality and let it open us to new possibilities and continued growth.

With love, Maggie

Mother Nature

BOTH SIDES NOW

A NEW LEAF