It Was My Mother's

You filled the can more carefully than you would for anything else on that sill.

You noticed yourself doing it. You held it under the tap and watched the water and took it off at a level you had decided on, and then you carried it across the room in a way you do not carry it for the others.

It was hers. It sat in her window for about nine years and you saw it every time you went, and now it is in yours, and you are frightened of it.

That is the honest word and I am going to use it. Not careful. Frightened.

Because there is a thought underneath the way you carry that can and it is this: if this dies, I lose her again.

You have not said that out loud to anybody, because it sounds like too much for a plant. And it is not too much. It is exactly what you feel and it is what this article is about.

Let me say what I am not going to do.

I am not going to tell you it is only a plant.

It is not only a plant. It came out of her house. She watered it for nine years with her own hands and she cut the brown bits off it and she moved it in the spring and it is the last living thing she looked after. Somebody who says it is only a plant has not understood what is on that sill and is trying to make you feel better by making it smaller.

It matters. That is the starting position of this article and I am not moving off it.

What I want to take off you is the terror, and the terror comes from one particular idea that has quietly installed itself, and it is not true.

Which dwelt first in thy grandmother

There is a line in a letter from Paul to a young man, and what it traces is the point.

When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. (2 Timothy 1:5, King James Version)

Which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice.

Three generations, named, in one sentence. And the thing being traced through them is a faith, and the verb is dwelt.

Dwelt is a living word. It means lived in, made a home in. What passed from Lois to Eunice to Timothy was not an object handed over at a doorway. It was something that had been alive in one person and was alive in the next one, and Paul is persuaded it is now in this young man himself.

Now notice what is not in that verse.

There is nothing of Lois's in it. No item. No keepsake, no piece of household, nothing she owned. If Paul had wanted to point at what remained of that woman he could have pointed at anything of hers, and instead he points at Timothy.

She is in the man. That is where she persisted.

And here is what that settles for the pot on your windowsill.

Whatever your mother put into you is not stored in an object. It is in you, the way Lois was in Timothy, and it is not vulnerable to a windowsill.

She is not held in that pot. That is the idea that installed itself and it is why filling a watering can has become an act of terror. Somewhere it became settled that a portion of her is contained in that plant, on loan, and that letting it die would be letting a piece of her go.

That is not how she persists and it is not where she is.

Whatever she put into you is dwelling in you and not stored in an object, and she has never once been held in that pot. 2 Timothy 1:5 traces the faith through three people and points at none of their belongings, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody filling a watering can more carefully than she needs to.

The fear is what will kill it

Here is the practical half, and it is worth knowing because it is doing real damage.

The way you are treating that plant is the most likely thing to kill it.

Fear makes people overwater. That is the single commonest way a houseplant dies and it is almost never neglect; it is somebody who cares, checking, seeing soil that looks dry on top, and adding a little more just in case. And a little more, several times a week, for months.

The plants that survive in most houses are the ones nobody is anxious about.

So the fear is not protecting it. It is the risk. And that is a hard thing to hear when the fear feels like the most loving thing you are doing.

And here is the second cost, which matters more than the plant.

You cannot enjoy it.

That plant has been in your house for months and you have never once simply looked at it with any pleasure. You look at it to assess it. Every glance is an inspection: how is it doing, is that leaf worse, has it changed since yesterday. It has become a patient rather than a plant, and a thing under permanent assessment cannot be loved.

She had it for nine years and she was not frightened of it. She cut bits off it. She probably forgot it for two weeks at a time and it was fine. Her relationship with it was ordinary and easy, and that ease is more like her than your carefulness is.

And if it does die, at some point, of something: you will not have lost her again. You will be sad, and it will be a real sadness with her in it, and it will not remove one thing that she put in you.

The fear is the risk rather than the protection, and a thing under permanent inspection has never once been able to be enjoyed. The written word finds the woman in the person and not in her belongings, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has turned a plant into a patient.

Water it today and say her name

So here is the assignment, and it has two parts and the second one is the whole of it.

Water it today and say her name out loud while you do.

Water it normally. Not carefully. Fill the can the way you fill it for the others, and give it what you would give anything else that size, and do not stand there afterward looking at it.

And while you are doing it, say her name.

Out loud, in the room. Not a sentence, not a prayer, and not something addressed to the plant, because the plant is a plant and you are not talking to your mother through a leaf.

Just her name, spoken in your own house, while your hands are doing the thing she used to do.

Here is why this is the assignment.

At the moment she is in that pot silently. The association is doing its work underneath, unnamed, which is what makes it so heavy: you have never once said out loud what you are actually afraid of, so the fear has no shape and attaches itself to the whole activity of watering.

Saying her name puts her back where she is. She comes out of the pot and into the room, into your voice, into the ordinary act of a daughter doing what her mother did. That is where she actually persists, and speaking it once makes it real to you in a way that no amount of my writing can.

And you may find that difficult, and it may not be difficult at all, and either is fine.

And then walk away and do not check it for three days.

You are able to put her name in the room instead of leaving it silently in the pot, and speaking it has never once been the same as letting her go. 2 Timothy 1:5 names Lois and Eunice out loud and points at the living person, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody saying a name over a watering can.