from Stanislaw Warda: Mother Day and Love

Well-dressed young women with a bunch of children carrying flowers, huge traffic next to cemeteries, and people at the intersections selling flowers all remind me that today is Mother Day. I wonder if they are selling tulips, I thought. Tulips has become my connection with Mother Day forever. It makes me smile when I think about it. 

It was just a couple day before the Mother Day. My siblings and I usually worked in our, or rather to be precise, our grandma’s garden. We wanted to pick flowers for our mom during her day. Our garden looked beautiful at this time, especially the tulips. I picked one of the most beautiful for our mom. I did not want to cut it off now, but on the morning of Mother Day to be fresh and smell beautiful.  Tulips grow in small rectangular parcels near the fence. Together with the roses in the round bed and white lilies they portrayed the compositions which catch the eyes of people from our street who come to the bakery early in the morning.

This garden was the apple of our grandmother's eye. She loved when her neighbors stopped for the while to admire her garden which was really the most beautiful on our street. She had been apodictic and stubborn, but she loved to take care of her garden. The term take care was problematic because practically we children had been working there very hard, while she talked with her neighbors and praised herself and her garden. I hated this job. We often had to wake up early in the morning because our grandma could not sleep and early in the morning, she had gotten the golden idea to work in the garden. For her it was very important to do it before the first clients show up in our bakery; everything in the garden was to be done. We hated this morning alarm. We protested by crying, we wanted to sleep, but it did not help us and just before the time of our school, we have to go to do some chores in the garden.

Our parents were not our alliance in this matter. They held the way of our grandma because they thought that raising children through challenging work was useful. What would we do? So we weeded the beds and watered the flowers. I hated weeds because I felt constant pain in my knees and neck, but watering was ok, besides the place with lilies.

I did not like this patch because there were a lot of frogs. It was my brother’s activity. He loved to go to the nearby wetlands and brought a bunch of frogs from them. I still picture him when he smiley marched to the home with full hands of frogs. Frogs were sticking out of every pocket of his short pants and wriggling in his palms. They held their legs together, forming two chains of frogs dangling almost to the ground.  He had brought this all to our home, but he was throwing out just a second later, along with his frogs. He did not know what to do, so he released them to our garden. They had been croaking often, glad that they found their new home in our lilies. I did not like them especially when they grew big and looked terrible.

In the evening before the Mother Day I earnestly watered our tulips parcel so our tulips looked   beautiful during the Mother Day. In the Mother Day early morning I had been waking up and immediately run to our garden. On our tulip parcel all our tulips had been cut. Some stupid children stole our tulips.

I still do not like to work in the gardens, it was result of our grandma forcing me to do it, perhaps. I also think that my parents were wrong. I would be Jude them and rebelliously announced “Parents should encourage children to work through showing them the beauty of this activity to awaken the passion for action. The action with love, not with force,” -and other bla, bla, bla.  I do not want to do it. I prefer to look at this like one more story from life which it can speak by itself. 

Once in my high school time I had a crush on a girl. I had been interested and her friends told me that she loves to plant flowers.  They had been living in the apartment building and she planted flowers on her balcony.  When our local newspaper announced the competition for the most beautiful garden or balcony in our city, her balcony was always on the top of the list. Later, they moved to a home near a busy street. When I passed this street, I often saw her crouching in her garden doing some work. Even now, after a long time when I visited my old place, I have seen her doing something in her garden. Last time I talked with her for a while. I asked if she likes to travel to see another place. “Yes,” she said. “I visited a few countries, it was ok. My husband encourages me to visit Italy this year, but I said to him “Go yourself, I have my garden.” It is for sure not passion.