Sand in My Eyes (44 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

My dear daughter
,

What mother doesn’t want to teach her children everything there is to know about life
?
I’ve written a book, I’ve written you letters, but deep within me, I know that nothing I say or do is going to prevent or protect you from the infinite problems of life, which like waves from an ocean keep coming at you one mammoth challenge after the next. No sooner do you deal with one than you are hit by another, until one day you find yourself no longer seeing the beauty of it all. It’s as if you’re walking around with sand in your eyes
.

But fueled by motherly love, here I go unfurling my most intimate wish for you, that when life does this to you, when it has you no longer seeing beauty or believing in good, that you cry out to the Lord. He is the only one, I have found, who can wash my eyes clean. And because problems are a part of living, as infinite as the grains of sand on the seashore, I find myself crying out to Him almost every day
.

What more can I say, just that everything takes a certain amount of work; that if you think getting what you want in life is easy, then you may as well walk over to your neighbor’s yard and steal one of her flowers when she isn’t looking, because life isn’t easy, nor is growing a garden, but once you start recognizing the pests and learning how to control weeds, and all the other basics there are to learn, then the effort you put into your gardening becomes more pleasurable
.

But, because not everything will be blooming all the time, it is my prayer for you that each and every morning of your life, and in every season, you wake to birds singing out your window. And when there are no birds, or window, that you wake up singing yourself, and when you have nothing good to sing, that your soul will sing for you, to remind you in some roundabout way that this is the day that the Lord hath made and only He can turn your bad days good, making you feel as if you’re flying above those waves on the wings of a great white heron
.

And if nothing else, then, I pray that you will spot the wildflowers hidden within the weeds. Look for the wild petunias and think of them. They bloom for one morning or day, and then die. We don’t know the number of our days so, like the wild petunia, why not make each current day we do have spectacular
?

It’s hard being the mother of small children, and harder the mother of teenagers, but the hardest of all is to be the mother of adult children who are no longer seeing the beauty in life. When her children are grown, a mother can only do so much. She can no longer scold or punish them, cradle them in her arms, or sing lullabies to them at bedtime. She hasn’t the power to change her children’s lives. All she can do is try not to judge, but pray and hope that she gave them when they were younger the tools needed to step out into their gardens and do their own work—to become master gardeners for their own lives!

Well, that’s all I have to say about life. It’s all I know. I’m just your mum. I look forward to our next visit, and to hearing about all that you know, too!

Love, me

CHAPTER SIXTY

WHEN I HAD NOTHING
else profound to say about life, and no longer felt the need to stare up at my little house on stilts, I walked back over to Fedelina’s old yard, to the magnolia tree her son had planted in the ground twenty years earlier. The tree was now taller than the roof of the house, and as I stepped beneath its shaded canopy I nervously glanced at my watch. Any minute now I would meet up with the planter of this tree.

The thought of seeing him after all these years had me circling the trunk of the tree like a squirrel, and I didn’t know whether I would jump into his arms at the sight of him or run up the tree and hide. My children had asked me countless times since the release of my book if I ever loved anyone other than their father, but I’ve told them only what I want them to know. A mother has that right, to tweak reality, add a fictitious flair, and get creative with the stories she passes on to her children. And an author has the right to declare fiction from fact.

“It was only a week out of my entire life,” I muttered beneath my breath as I reached down and picked a daisy. “I don’t know why I’m feeling as nervous as I am.”

When I stood back up again, there he was—the man I watched through my bathroom window twenty years earlier as he planted this magnolia tree for his mother.

“Oh my goodness,” I said, smiling into his eyes, but he looked right through me as if he didn’t know me at all—and he didn’t. We had only
met briefly—that time in the hallway—and then I had watched him through my window, and he had no idea I was up there. The rest was all a product of my imagination, a story I wrote the week my husband was gone, and my children, too. A story I worked on around the clock, morning, noon, and night without rest, attempting through my writing to paint a picture of the love my husband might have had for the other woman when he cheated on me. But I knew, in the end, that my husband never in his wildest dreams had such love for anyone as what I had for Liam, if only in the expectations of my mind and the longings of my heart.

“Congratulations on your book, Anna,” he said formally. “You must be proud.”

“No,” I said, and it was true. When I thought of pride, when I thought about what mattered to me most, it was my children. They were the masterpieces I helped to create, the statues I sculpted, and the gardens I nurtured and grew. “Writing brings me insight and pleasure—along with grief—but I’m not ‘proud’ of my writing, no.”

“I must say, I wiped my eyes when I saw it was dedicated to my mother,” he told me then.

“She really did inspire me,” I said. “Seeing her out there in the garden like that. And she was always so nice.”

“Did she really say all those things about flowers?” he asked me.

“Some of it, she did,” I said, my face turning red with embarrassment. “The rest I came up with on my own. I hope I don’t sound like a total whack-a-doo. But I will say your mother still inspired me. Having lived a short time next to an amazing woman, having watched her at work in her garden, did something to me.”

He looked at me strangely. “It made you want to write a novel?”

“No,” I said. “I always knew I’d write a novel, long before I met your mother. I guess seeing her out there each day got me to thinking about what I want to be doing when I’m her age.”

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“It’s hard to articulate,” I told him shyly.

“I don’t believe that,” he said. “I would think it would be easy for you to articulate. You’re an author.”

I laughed and had to look away, for his blue eyes were making it hard for me to think. But then I spotted specks of blue at my feet, and those specks of blue were as beautiful as his eyes. I felt like blowing a trumpet at the sight of them, for it was spring and there were morning glories everywhere!

“What’s wrong?” he asked me.

“Your mother did tell me something interesting about morning glories,” I said, looking up again, trying not to get distracted by the butterflies, for they, too, were attracted to the morning glories.

“What did she say?”

“She said each flower unfurls only once, has one life to live, then it closes and dies, to be quickly replaced by another.”

“I never heard her say that before,” he said. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

I laughed, and so did he, and at the same time that I glanced down at his left hand, I think he was looking down at mine. When he saw that I had no ring on my fingers, he said, “I’ve been meaning—after reading your book—to visit the Red Mangrove Overlook. I don’t know if you have plans or not, but if you don’t, I would love some company.”

Like a little girl, I reached down and picked one of the heart-shaped leaves, feeling joy from the flowers and giving praise to the Lord for giving me my life. It didn’t take me long to know what the spirit of God was trying to tell me through those flowers, that like the morning glories, I had one life to live, and that this is my life!

I stood up again, aware that I had forgotten about the morning glories when writing my book, and that I should write another, a sequel to this book about flowers. Then again, what more can one say about flowers that hasn’t been said already? Maybe I should write one about leaves instead, starting it with sea grapes!

“I’d love to see the Red Mangrove Overlook,” I said to Liam. “Would you believe I’ve never been there?”

THE END

P.S. I do know a few things to be true about life. Not everyone is born with a green thumb. It’s why God created wildflowers. And no, I don’t believe life changes with a knock at the door. But rather, one has to open the door, or go out knocking oneself
.

S
AND
in
M
Y
E
YES

READER’S GUIDE

1. LIVING A LIFE ONE LOVES.
According to the prologue, there is nothing a mother longs to hear more than her grown daughter living a life she loves. Do mothers hear this today or do they often hear something different from their daughters? The older Anna was worried whether she had taught her daughter “how to soar through life, so her journey is not all demanding, but breathtakingly beautiful, too.” Is this something mothers can teach their daughters? If so, in what ways?

2. PHASES OF LIFE.
What stages of life does Anna go through? Do all mothers go through different sorrowful stages of transition? What helps them through these potential turning points?

3. CHALLENGES OF MOTHERHOOD.
In the first chapters of the book, does Lemmon exaggerate how hard motherhood can be, or have you at times felt the way she describes? Fedelina says she has no secret to make motherhood easier. Have you heard of anything to make it easier? Do you know of any secrets?

4. THE FIERY FOREST.
Anna makes frequent references to a fiery forest in her mind. What might this fiery forest represent? Have you found anything to help you from worrying at night? What suggestions do you have for people who lie awake at night fearing and thinking negative thoughts?

5. ONE WEEK TO YOURSELF.
Young Anna gets a whole week to herself. Suppose you’re in the “stage of life” that Anna is in—bombarded by housework and small children. Then you’re granted one week all to yourself in your home. How would you want to spend it? Realistically, how would you spend it? How did Anna’s husband want her spending the week? How did she really spend it? Is the want for such time alone realistic? Why do women feel guilty once they get it?