When my friend Sara Reece and her husband moved from Tallahassee to the Midwest, Sara (a botanist) sketched a beautifully detailed landscape map of her yard for the people who bought their house. The map not only labeled each of the trees and shrubs on her property, but it also showed where seasonal flowers and plants were located, what month they typically bloomed, how big they would get, and the type of watering and fertilizing they would require. It was such a generous gift to the new homeowners. They could move into their new home and know the history buried beneath the dirt and what they could expect to emerge from it over the seasons.

I thought about Sara’s landscape map last week after reading Garrison Keillor’s poignant short story, “Nonstop, Minneapolis-St. Paul to New York” (thank you for sharing it, Lisa Waxman!)

Keillor’s piece wasn’t about gardening. He had written about the regret he felt for not learning more about the adults in his life who had passed away. Keillor wrote, “I regret my neglect of my aunts and uncles and teachers as they got older and faded and passed away, because now that it’s too late, I realize I’ve lost my history and it’s irrecoverable. Especially the aunts: they knew what preceded me and how I came into the world, my parents’ passion for each other, their early religious experiences, the dilemmas they faced, the family rivalries, a large basis of my individual being.”

My mother was a big fan of Garrison Keillor, and she used to listen to A Prairie Home Companion when I was a kid. My husband and I became avid fans of the show as well, but not until after my mother had passed away. I never got to ask her why she liked A Prairie Home Companion so much. I would really love to know her answer.

In fact, there are a million questions I wish I had asked my mother when I had the chance. She had a huge influence on the shape and form of my own landscape map – but I was so busy trying to grow up and live my own life, I never stopped to learn key details of her life as a young girl, a daughter, a sister, a newlywed, and new mom – which ultimately planted the seeds and fertilized the soil of my own life.

One summer day when I was about 13, I remember approaching my mother in the kitchen to ask if I could hang out with some friends at a neighbor’s house. I didn’t expect her to say yes, because she thought these kids were troublemakers (they were) and she didn’t like me spending time with them.

She was bent over a kitchen drawer putting silverware away and when I got closer, I could see her tears dripping into the drawer. I had never seen my mother cry before. My breath caught in my throat.

There had been some unfortunate turbulence surrounding one of my seven siblings that summer and I think it was breaking my mother’s heart. I asked her if she was okay and she said yes, so I didn’t probe any further and then asked if I could go hang out with my friends. She said yes to that also, so I thanked her and took off down the street.

I would give anything to go back in time to that day in the kitchen and re-do the exchange with my mom. I hate that I was so focused on what I wanted to do that I missed a precious chance to spend time with her and get to know her as a woman who hurts, who cries, who breaks. There was so much I could have learned about – and from – her in that moment, but I couldn’t see it.

My mother was an extraordinary person on many levels. I was 25 when she passed away. She didn’t have time to leave behind a landscape map to show me what to expect, where the roots that sustained her were buried and the type of soil and fertilizer that made her thrive.

But for 25 years of my life, she gave me a living map.  She was selfless, loving, strong, fiercely protective, creative, fun-loving and forgiving. And she loved to garden. And that’s enough. She continues to be my inspiration. Map or no map.

“She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.

She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.”

Proverbs 31: 25-26