The houses were smaller then and in the late afternoon when kitchen windows were open the neighborhood smelled like supper. Walter Cronkite’s familiar voice would be part of the background concerto along with the banging screen door and the occasional quick piercing ring of the telephone. The carport held only a single spot for the family car, fireflies were caught and called lightning bugs, and the dining room table was where supper and homework happened. The windows had curtains on them, either homemade or ordered from Sears and Roebuck’s and there was only one TV; it was in the living room and it signed off at midnight. I’m not just describing my house, I’m describing everyone’s house in my childhood, just taking my senses back a few decades to that illusive and real “simple life;” noting, we are suddenly “simply” there again, in different ways.

A few years ago, Elizabeth and I took a trip to New England. It was one of the best trips of my life. I especially remember and was impacted by Concord, Massachusetts, and wrote about it when I returned:

“Most of today was spent in Concord, MA amongst the transcendentalists — Emerson, Thoreau and their little tag along, Louisa Mae. Just this morning, I stood in Louisa Mae Alcott’s bedroom and saw the desk her father made for her where she wrote ‘Little Women’ and just after that I was at The Manse and saw the garden that Henry David Thoreau planted for his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Hawthorne’s 1843 window etching — ‘Man’s accidents are God’s purposes.’”

On that day, we also walked around Walden Pond and through the woods at Walden where Thoreau went to “live deliberately.”

These two quotes I felt compelled to cite eight years ago, two thoughts I thought were interesting and profound, are now two thoughts that can fit seamlessly into the fabric of today. As I reread them, I wonder what social disturbance was occurring then to produce such reflection from Sophia Hawthorne and Thoreau. Anyway, just a fragment of a thought, a casual observation and a beautiful memory joined together and sitting here on this page to perhaps ponder and to recognize life’s repetition.

As with all things, good and not so good, behaviors have come from this present-day “disturbance.” Something “good” is the seemingly increased interest in gardening. Going to the garden early in the morning to see what the night has brought is a simple and pure joy I wish for all. Mother Nature will have done her magic in the hours before under the moonlight, below the stars and within the shadowy shroud of nightfall. Her morning gifts will be polished with dew and filled with flavor and goodness. The birds will be there at dawn also, morning birds, already chirping and speaking to one another through song drifting in the cerulean sky and perched slightly hidden in the trees. I always listen and try to understand knowing, that no matter what, Nature will continue to do what she does; the birds will always sing, the flowers will reseed and bloom again and again, and the night will deliver the dew.

I love that she has so much power and determination. I love that she has the ability to sustain us and to give us nourishment and joy and I especially love how we have, in this slow down, come to know her once again. She is like our mothers in many ways, always there, always giving, always teaching. Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms, to the ones still with us and to the mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, girlfriends and wives who remain with us in spirit and whose essence is continued through our love and our lives. And to all of you, happy gardening.

Take good care of your mother and take good care of our Earth, for “A good mother is irreplaceable” — Adriana Trigian.

PAM SHENSKY is a wife and mom to five.