Marcia Gay Harden - The Seasons of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers

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An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright 2018 by Marcia Gay Harden

Everything Must Change

Words and Music by Benard Ighner

Copyright 1974 ALMO MUSIC CORP.

Copyright Renewed

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC

Illustrations on pages by Alexis Seabrook.

All other illustrations by Shutterstock.

A portion of the authors proceeds has been donated to Alzheimers research.

*Some names have been changed.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition May 2018

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Interior design by Amy Trombat

Jacket design by Na Kim

Author photo by Larsen&Talbert

Endpaper photos are from the authors personal collection.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-5011-3570-5

ISBN 978-1-5011-3572-9 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to my amazing mother, Beverly Harden, who fills the world around her with beauty.

And to Alvin Sargent, who inspired me to write in twenty-minute stretches.

And to my remarkable children, Eulala, Julitta, and Hudson, without whom my stretches would have been interminable. Your grandmother is an extraordinary woman.

fuubutsushi: Japanese (n.) the thingsfeelings, scents, imagesthat evoke memories or anticipation of a particular season.

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.

WASHINGTON IRVING

WASHINGTON IRVING, THE AUTHOR OF the beautiful quote above, also wrote the wonderful short story Rip Van Winkle about a man who goes to sleep in the Catskill Mountains for several decades, and when he wakes up, the world around him has drastically changed. He has slept through the death of his wife, the growth of his daughter, life has transformed around him, yet he has no memory of the passing of time. I read that story as a kid, and hated it. Beautifully written, yes, but what an unbearable loss it seemed.

My mother too has spent many wonderful days in the Catskill Mountains while visiting my family on our property in upstate New York. She has played with my kids, canoed on the lake, planted in the garden, and slumbered on the hammock. Unlike Rip Van Winkle, however, my mother hasnt slept through lifes momentous events. In fact she has participated fully in the growth of her children, the death of her husband, the births of her grandchildren, and all of the miraculous moments that life has gifted her, but she also has no memory of the passage of time. She has Alzheimers disease. I will never stop yearning for her to wake up and simply need an update on the last twenty years, rather than an update on her entire life. In this book, I do for my mother what she can no longer do. I remember.

My memories are not fact. Science says our memories change each time they are recalled, and that no two peoples memories are the same, even if they are recalling the same event. Memories are affected by emotion and perspective. As one of five children, I am grateful to have shared so many wonderful childhood experiences with my siblings, but I know these dont necessarily translate into duplicate memories. So these memories are mine, of my adventures with my mother.

This is not a disease where one can make lemonade from lemons, there is nothing good about Alzheimers, and I resist even a nod toward accepting its ravages. But I will say that my beautiful mother has managed to teach me, even through the destruction of her capabilities and creativity, that there is such a thing as indestructible spirit. Pursue your dreams, now. Be in the moment, now. Fill your head with good loving thoughts, now. These are gifts from my mother, learned over the years, but especially poignant as the one place she lives the most fully is in the now. She cannot remember the past. She cannot imagine the future. But she is fully aware of the now. Through a daughters eyes, I share her stories in hopes of keeping her legacy alive.

Grief and loss have cycles, like the seasons. Sometimes loss can spur the planting of new seeds and give birth to a creative rush. Sometimes, however, loss can crush a seed, or force it to lie dormant for years. My mother and I were to experience both of these as we embarked upon the journey for this book.

In December 2003, our lives were about to turn upside down. Mom got on a plane, returning from a great stay at my home in the colorful Catskills to her homeland of Southlake, Texas. She had been busy filming her hoped-for idea of a showwe would call it The Flower Path and in it she would take people all over America (indeed, the world) exploring various exotic flower gardens and occasionally arranging an ikebana flower arrangement, as she had learned how to do so masterfully when Dad was stationed in Yokohama, Japan. While Dad was at sea, Mom, perhaps to stifle her boredom at raising five kids, had taken a Japanese flower-arranging class and discovered an outlet for her spirit.

She had learned that the roots of ikebana were over a thousand years old, and were associated with the the ritual offering of flowers by monks to Buddha, and so the ideas surrounding ikebana were about spiritual harmony. She was told that by placing an arrangement in her home, she could transform the space into one of spiritual reflection and beauty. That certainly sounded appealing to an often single mother of five rugrats all under the age of eleven! She also learned that ikebana was used to mark the seasons, and so, with each arrangement, she celebrated the seasons and events of our lives. She discovered that ikebana is both a spiritual ritual and a fine art, just like painting or sculpture, and that the arrangements follow specific rules. The most important rule being that ikebana flower arrangements form an assymetrical triangle, and the three main stems of the triangle are called shin , soe , and hikae , meaning heaven, earth, and man.