When Plants Talk Back

Walk into her house, go past the living room, open the sliding glass doors. Outside, you'll see a beautiful array of flowers and fruit trees. All my life my mother has been a gardener. Growing up, I would wake up on weekend mornings and peak through my bedroom window to see my mother weaving the magical wand of a garden hose across the plains of her own plant paradise, where she, was it's protector. When my mom was in her garden, I would watch an almost seed-like light in her eyes blossom into a beauty rose. When her hands were working in the dirt, her heart rose into the sky and when you looked up, you could watch as she conquered the sun and all the rainclouds; only accepting the suns' rays and the rainclouds' rain as peace treaties to end the turmoil.

It was a sight to behold. But as I watched the growth of her garden kingdom unfold, I often wondered why: why does she loves gardening so much? So I walk up to her one day and arrogantly ask "hey mom, why do you love spending so much time with these stupid plants? You know sometimes it almost seems like you like them more than you like us." For a second my mom just looked at me, garden shovel in one hand and a hose in other, to my surprise smiles, and replies " well unlike my kids, when I talk, my plants don't talk back."

But it was more then that. Cause every time my mom steps back into her garden, a transformation occurs. When I close my eyes and really look , I can see a well with the purest of water rise up within her heart, transform into a geyser and shoot out from the very essence of her soul. This garden is her oasis, amongst the desert of day-to-day stresses, a way in which her spirit expresses its need to be released from this neurotically work work work driven society. But more importantly, it's a space where she can just be; where she can breath deeply due to the oxygen of inner peace that her plants produce and induce within her.

Two weeks before I graduate college, I arrive at my mothers' house to spend some quality time with my grandma. I sit down and listen as grandmother offers me words of wisdom; reminding me how important it is to pray constantly, then to do unto the world that which speaks life into your own being. As my grandma and I speak, we briefly step outside amongst my mothers wonderland. And as I stand in the motherland, surrounded by beautiful arrays of flowers and fruit trees , I can feel the power that these plants command. When grandma goes back inside, I sit down in the middle of this plant paradise; finally able to fully understand why my mother loves this "stupid garden" so much.

I gaze at her garden, filled with so much magic that I can't even come up with a metaphor to relate it to, and wonder if my mother and her father- who I now know something about through the green thumbs he passed down - may have felt this magic to. As I begin to wonder this, the wind whispers silent words through her garden . And though it fails to match up with what mom said about her plants before, I could have sworn that for just a second...I could hear her plants, talking back...

The Movement Continues...
Rhetorical Artz