When I was a child my mother used to take me into the forest to look for edible wild mushrooms. She had learned which mushrooms were safe to eat from her older sisters and brothers—and who knows where they learned it! These sojourns into the woods were very special because they usually resulted in my mother sautéing the fresh mushrooms in butter on the stove and us sitting together to enjoy the fruits of our journey.
These adventures alone with my mom meant so much more to me than just harvesting those amazingly delicious mushrooms. These were times alone in the quiet of the forest with just the birds chirping above us as we meandered upon mossy paths under pines and maples and oaks. These were times of quiet but also of stories—perhaps about her own parents or about her eight brothers and sisters and what she learned from all of them.
I deeply treasured these times with my mother and so many other similar sojourns into the woods, harvesting blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries and then coming home to make preserves or pie. Sometimes we would trudge through the woods to the Sonny Creek side on the hill to pick lilacs and bring them back to the house to put in a vase on the kitchen table.
Looking back on these days and how present my mother was to me, one would think I was an only child. Yet she had six other children as well as a mother-in-law with dementia in the same farmhouse.
My mother’s generosity of spirit and the time she gave to me were gifts to last a lifetime. The memory of these times live within me and in a flash, I can go back and see my mother’s face or the place along the creek where the lilacs grew. I can smell the mushrooms in the pan. I can taste the fresh blueberry pie. And the bigger life lesson for me is that life is indeed lived in moments.
The greatest gift we can give to our children and to each other is the gift of our presence. More often than not the little things in life contain the biggest blessings.
So I thank mother for these memories. I thank her for sowing the seeds of gratitude within me, and for showing me how to connect with the beauty and bounty of nature. And I thank her for showing me the pathway to living a life of joy. As we look past the COVID-19 era and to the warmth of spring, may we all find our way back to these precious places of connection where we build bonds with our children and each other and where we make life memories.
