One of my favorite classics to read every early spring is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodges Burnett. It is a children’s story written over a hundred years ago yet every time I read it something new blooms in my heart.
At one point in the story, the main character Mary is showing her Secret Garden to a local boy named Dickon. She knew nothing about gardening yet had devoted herself to the space. She invited Dickon into her secret and on that first morning as he joined her they were working together when he spotted some work she had done on her own.
“Why!” he cried, pointing to the grass a few feet away. “Who did that there?”
It was one of Mary’s own little clearings round the pale green points.
“I did it,” said Mary.
“Why, I thought tha’ didn’t know nothin’ about gardenin’,” he exclaimed.
“I don’t,” she answered, “but they were so little, and the grass was so thick and strong, and they looked as if they had no room to breathe. So I made a place for them. I don’t even know what they are.”
Dickon went and knelt down by them, smiling his wide smile.
“Tha’ was right,” he said. “A gardener couldn’t have told thee better. They’ll grow now like Jack’s bean-stalk….. Eh! they will be a sight.”
This was the short interchange that had a lasting effect on my mothering. I read this one spring as I cared for a 7 month old, 18 month old, and a barely three year old. I was overwhelmed with emotions, stress, exhaustion, clutter, housework, self-expectations, and dinner. When I read this passage I could feel the grass that was so thick and strong crowding out the room in my life, in my heart. I saw these three babies as tender plant shoots and I saw how crowded they were as well.
In the story, Mary saw the pale green shoots and how choked they looked and she fell to her hands and knees and, using a small stick she found nearby, she dug carefully around the tiny plants and made a little space around them. She didn’t know how to garden but she innately knew that the plants needed room to breathe. I didn’t know how to parent three children under the age of three and yet I knew that we were all in desperate need of room to breathe. So I took my stick, what I had at hand, and started making space.
I started to say “no” to more requests. I culled our calendar and obligations. I went through the house and weeded out clutter. Then I did it again and again. (Clutter regrows, same as weeds do.) I simplified as much as I could. Not all at once, but little by little as the weeks and months passed. I started learning from others like The Minimalists, Dawn with The Minimal Mom, Dana K. White, and in-real-life wise mamas who I tried to surround myself with. And I made room. We found space. And the children have grown. You might even say flourished.
Looking around you at your garden, what is there that needs tending? Don’t lose heart if it looks overwhelming. As Frances Hodges Burnett once said, “Hang in there. It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen.”
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