TCB with Mom

My parents visited this week, and as usual my mother took care of business. It's amazing to watch her work. They were here just overnight, but in less than 24 hours my mother accomplished the following:

• baked an apple pie
• mended Isaac's unraveling sheepskin slipper
• potted a succulent plant she had brought for an empty pot she knew I had
  
• fertilized the orchids
  
• dug, divided, and replanted an overcrowded iris and an ornamental grass
  

And we found time to go to the zoo!

She also offered me some advice. As I watched her replant a section of iris in a spot I had chosen, I told her that the one thing I missed about my life before Isaac was gardening. I had picked up my clippers in hopes of cutting back the dead peonies, but I couldn't do even that simple task while I was keeping an eye on Isaac. He was walking unsteadily through the slippery unraked leaves, brandishing a trowel, periodically shoving it (and his hands) into muddy flower beds, and chanting, "Dig! Dig!" (pronounced dih).

She said it was okay to miss things. And, she said, when I could finally garden again, there would be other things I would find myself missing.

She made both of these statements off-handedly (after all, she was digging a hole at the time), but they made a big impression on me. I felt relieved by her first statement, which surprised me -- had I forgotten that I didn't have to be happy about every single aspect of parenthood? And I was moved by the second statement. I miss gardening now because Isaac is a baby and requires my constant care, but when he has grown up and no longer needs me perhaps it is his babyhood that I will miss even more.

Although here I am, an adult, and my mother still shows up and takes care of me.