Today Belongs to the Future

We give it all.
We never know what time will grow.
Today we sow,
Tomorrow reap—
A little seed cast here and there,
And tended with our loving care.
No one plants all he can keep.
(1940s)

This was scratched out in pencil on the back of a White Plains Corn Flakes Shopping items note sheet, probably in the 1940s. A few words have been changed and a line torn off at the bottom. Probably a thought mom had as she was working in the kitchen. Her connection to the soil, her farming background, and her scriptural mindset are all presented here in a statement that reflects her philosophy that we do things today in preparation for tomorrow. Mom always looked forward to the spring, even when we lived in small apartments and could only plant flowers in little pots or flower boxes on the patio or next to our door. All she needed was a sliver a space where the sun shined. She made that her garden, even if we just had a few pansies.

Each spring we had to plant something. That was in her fiber from her days growing up on the farm. Once (1991?), when we were living in the Villa Apartments in Clovis, I planted a few pansies across the sidewalk outside our kitchen window. She enjoyed watching them every morning while she had coffee and toast. Just two or three purple and yellow flowers, maybe, 10’ square at most. I imagine, symbolically, she saw in them a whole field blooming, watched the sun bring out their colors, the breeze move their pettles. These gave her a focal point, a familiar grounding and center. Of course, the true flowers were her children, and through them her grandchildren, which she attended to and “tended,” each one as she could, with “loving care.” Giving completely of herself, whether parenting or gardening, was her trademark. She knew what she was doing was for the future, not just her selfish gratification. And she knew that it is the nature of both growing flowers and raising children that we must let go: “No one plants all he can keep.”