Gardening Inheritance

Families adapt when something essential disappears.

In my family, everything changed on June 1, 1985, when Dad died and my ecosystem was disrupted.

When a tree falls in a forest, the canopy opens. Light reaches places it never reached before. Some plants struggle without the shelter they depended on. Others suddenly have room to grow. The entire ecosystem restructures itself around the loss.

Families do that too.

Some branches of my family became more distant. Others grew closer. The connections shifted, and so did I. My mom’s family became the center of my world. My Aunt Alice and her two children were the extended family I spent Christmases and so many celebrations with. Dad’s brothers and sisters were still part of my story, but more distant and, like many families, wonderfully and sometimes painfully complicated.

More than anything, though, I grew toward Mom.

Life gave both of us plenty of hard things, and because of that we often became partners as much as parent and child. We are incredibly similar in some ways and completely different in others. We argued. We misunderstood each other. Two stubborn people rarely travel the same road without bumping into one another.

Yet whenever I truly needed her, Mom showed up.

Years ago, when I was teaching writing, I wrote a sample essay for my students called The Woman I Admire Most. It was about my mom. That has never really changed.

I also spent much of my life trying to protect her from me. I knew how much she had already carried, and I didn’t want to add another burden. I hid the confusion and the loneliness and the sheer weirdness of who I was inside. For years, she couldn’t fully understand me because I wasn’t letting her.

As I’ve found my own voice, we’ve both had the opportunity to learn. Looking back, I don’t think anyone failed me. Mom didn’t. My teachers didn’t. The systems around me were trying to help with the understanding they had at the time. It was simply an era before anyone knew what to look for or what to do with a kid like me. I wasn’t broken, and they weren’t failing. We were all navigating territory that few people understood. Through it all, Mom remained my strongest ally, even when neither of us fully understood what we were trying to solve.

The more I’ve learned about our family, the more hopeful I’ve become. Every family passes down struggles, but every family also passes down gifts. Mine passed down resilience, curiosity, stubbornness, and, perhaps most importantly, a love of growing things.

When I think about where that came from, I think about Baba.

I was the first grandchild born after Irene disappeared. For much of my life, Baba called everyone Jennifer. It wasn’t dementia; I think I was simply always on her mind.

My favorite memories of visiting her were always in the garden.

Every visit began with a tour. She would proudly show us what was growing, what needed tending, and what she was excited to harvest next. Eventually the adults would wander back inside, but I would stay outside, eating peas straight from the pod, searching for bugs and worms, and discovering what else the garden had to offer.

I don’t think Baba was trying to teach me anything, but she did.

She taught me that you don’t need to teach a seed to grow.

You care for it. You make space for it. You water it. You trust it. Growth happens in its own time.

I still have to remind myself of that lesson. Not every flower blooms the same way. Some bloom early. Some bloom late. Some bloom quietly. Some never bloom in the ways we expect at all. Yet every one has beauty, and every one contributes to the health of the garden. Diversity is what makes an ecosystem resilient.

Only much later did I realize that this was also my philosophy of teaching. I didn’t want to manufacture children into successful adults. I wanted to create the conditions where they could discover how they already knew how to grow.

Reading Robin Wall Kimmerer and learning about the mycorrhizal web gave me language for something I had felt my entire life. Healthy ecosystems are built on relationships. Beneath the forest floor, invisible connections allow one organism to support another. The strongest communities are not collections of individuals standing alone but networks helping one another thrive.

That is the world I am trying to build.

Today marks four years since Baba died, one year after I returned home from Korea. This season has always been one of endings and beginnings. The lilacs bloom, the school year ends, and life asks me once again to decide what comes next.

Today, though, I think I’ll honor Baba the way she taught me.

By spending the day tending the WebbSprout garden.

Sometimes the best way to thank the people who planted seeds in us is simply to keep growing them.

Also note that there’s no photo of Marie Webb gardening because she was too busy gardening to find one.