A mother is a walled garden. Her garden is a space in which the small flower of her child is simply allowed to be — and to be told, in the words of philosopher Josef Pieper, “It is good that you exist; how wonderful that you are!”
A mother’s supreme creation is this uplifting containment — a space that is both enclosed yet unconstrained. Hers is the unconditional acceptance of the essence of each unique life.
When I was little, I remember the feeling of seeing my mother at the end of the school day. “There she is!” My heart would leap for joy. I would try, unsuccessfully, to suppress my smile.
I’ve seen my own children do the same — at least until the teen years.
In utero, the mother’s amniotic sac contains the baby and acts as a cushion, protecting it from injuries. The fluid allows the baby to move freely within its secure limits. The placenta connects the baby to the mother, transferring oxygen, nutrients, and antibodies, while also filtering out the baby’s waste products.
Yet the baby remains a separate person, with a distinct genetic identity and independent circulatory, immune, and nervous systems. The womb is a sanctuary that allows this new being to flourish.
After birth, the mother’s garden continues to nurture the child’s growth.
Here is Pieper’s description: “We say that a person ‘blossoms’ when undergoing the experience of being loved; that he becomes wholly himself for the first time; that a ‘new life’ is beginning for him — and so forth. For a child, and to all appearance even for the still unborn child, being loved by the mother is literally the precondition for its own thriving.”
The mother’s positive affirmation of her child’s existence is at the heart of true flourishing.
In the enclosed walls of The Secret Garden, with its wild beauty, Mary begins to grow emotionally. “The sun was shining on the grass and on the flowers, and the birds were singing… Mary was beginning to feel a little bit more at home.”
Lacking her own mother, the garden becomes the place where she can be free to be herself.
A mother does not have to feel like a mother to be all this to her child. Love is compatible with insecurity, fear, depression, and even anger. Love is not perfection. Much good can come from our lack of confidence and our mistakes. Every day is a chance to begin again.
If the first garden is the womb, the second garden is the home. The idea of the mother as the heart of the home is a widely embraced cultural sentiment. In The Thoughtful Home, Dia Boyle echoes Josef Pieper in saying that home is a place where family members are not accepted for what they do, but “simply because of what they are.” They didn’t earn the right to be there — a home is “something you somehow haven’t to deserve,” says Robert Frost. They are there, as Boyle says, because they “belong.”
All the care — the laundry, the meals, the cleaning, the sleepless nights, the driving, the money and the time a mother gives — is rooted in her belief that each member of the family is a priceless treasure (even if, at times, her feelings betray her), and that it is so very, very good that they exist.
I remember walking into my parents’ house as a young adult after a day of work and feeling the stress of the day wondrously disappear. I felt free to be myself in that space, with my family.
As I grew older, I couldn’t imagine not having access to my childhood home. When I entered the house after my father died, I realized that home was defined by the people in it. Half of my home was now gone.
Mothers are usually described as nurturing, loving, protecting, and caring. These words are correct and good, but they fall short. A mother is both a homemaker and, in a real sense, our very first home.
To our mothers, we can truly say, in the words of Billy Joel: “Long as I have you by my side, there’s a roof above and good walls all around.”
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