I’ve written about this before, but when Spring rolls around in Portugal and my garden explodes in white from the vibrant calla lilies, I feel I owe it to my mother to pay homage to these flowers.
When I was a little girl growing up in Thika, Kenya, our house had a huge garden which my mother divided into a vegetable patch and a flower bed. I always got into trouble for yanking the carrots out of the garden and sneaking one to my rabbit and munching on the other. There were a host of other vegetables as well but only the carrots appealed to me because I had a partner in crime. Much as she poured all her hard work into it, Mommy’s passion wasn’t with the vegetables, but with the flowers. She tended to them with so much love and care, especially to the calla lilies.
During those years, she volunteered as a nurse at a local clinic run by the Irish nuns. Our little family was a regular fixture both at the convent and the clinic, and it was inevitable that my parents got involved in the local parish as well, run by, you guessed it, Irish priests. Once my mother’s calla lilies were discovered by the convent, someone would always drop in on Saturday to collect an armful of them to decorate the altar for Sunday mass. It was contribution that only made sense to me several decades later, but as a child, it was deeply ingrained in me that the lilies were important somehow.
Every country and house we moved to after Kenya never had calla lilies ever again, and Mommy missed them. If ever I was lucky enough to find some in a flower shop and have it included in a bouquet for her I would get it, otherwise the memories of the garden in Thika remained in our hearts. When I moved into the Frobbit House in 2022, I was delighted to find the garden full of them, buried under a sea of nasturtiums, but they were there. It was as if Mommy had given me her blessing and smiled down on me, saying, Yes, you have come full circle.
These lilies are incredibly resilient, and I absolutely adore them. They survive the scorching heat of Portuguese summers and thrive during the wet winters. So I have the privilege of being able to pick fresh lilies from the garden to my heart’s content. As I write this and admire the flowers on my desk, It’s as if mommy is all around me, sending me little love notes.
FrogDiva Thoughts 
Funny, how true, if ones childhood is fortunate enough, how the little things ones parents occupied themselves from gardening/ auto care etc,.. later comes full circle. For me, before I could blast off, be a kid and see my friends, the normal weekend Saturday started off with chores for a short amount of time an hour and a half/ from helping them gardening /washing the car etc. As a child doing chores always felt more of a burden before being set free. As an adult doing things which I have from back then with my parents, has come full circle. I appreciate and enjoy the things I didn’t back then fully comprehend. I also concur that although they have passed on,… their presence is still felt in a heart felt sort of approving way.
Thank you so much Jeffrey, and yes, it is indeed the little things that make all the difference. We take so much for granted in our youth, including the presence and guiding hand of our parents.