My family’s old beach house boasted some lovely gardens and landscaping, thanks to the green thumbs of my grandmother, my mother, and my cousin N. The rest of us just appreciated their efforts. My love of sweetpeas, in particular, is hardwired into my lineage; my mother could remember her grandmother planting them. Who knows how far back the sweetpea love gene goes?

But when I think of the beach house, I think of geraniums most of all. Grandma planted them in the 1970s, mom kept them going, and cousin N kept them going past that.

When we sold the beach house in 2005, cousin N took some geranium clippings, replanted them, and gave me a pot of them. The very same geraniums!

This picture is from 2005. Lacking the green thumb gene, I could not sustain them.

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I lost my mom 8 years ago on this date. Still feel lost without her, sometimes. Lots of times.

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This is an interesting story. In 1922, after the death of his mother, Carl Jung said

I had to achieve a kind of representation in stone of my innermost thoughts and of the knowledge I had acquired. Or, to put it another way, I had to make a confession of faith in stone. [read the whole story]

So he built a house. Jung added

…only afterward did I see how all the parts fitted together and that a meaningful form had resulted: a symbol of psychic wholeness.

I hope that I’m building an interior structure of psychic wholeness because of, and in tribute to, my mother.

Brick by brick. Day by day.