i think my mother was a gardener only because of me. according to my father, the few times ive spoken with him and he, begrudgingly, spoke back, my mother had always hated the dirt and bugs and beating sun of gardening, and had bemoaned those who kept it as a hobby - "you can buy vegetables at the store! you can do anything else in the world with your time!" - and yet, when i was cut out of her a month early - i wouldve died otherwise - with no feeling in my legs and a chronic heart condition, she went outside and started hacking at weeds as soon as she had healed. it started as just a way to get out her anger at god for the state i was in, but when my dad left her for a nice younger girl with no 'troubled' child to care for, my mother turned her attention entirely to the garden. she spent hours outside, obsessively weeding, pruning, rearranging. she said she didnt want pesticides, didnt trust them after they had killed her dahlias one horrible summer, so by the time i was 7 and running over my older brother's toes with my wheelchair my mother was out for hours every day meticulously picking off insects and cleaning leaves and stalks to prevent rot or, god forbid, infestation. she worked a high enough paying job so she could afford anything she wanted for that plot of earth, but she soon found her favourites after a mint bush planted by the previous owner refused to abide by her constant uprooting and kept coming back and choking everything else out. by the time i was 14 and had realised i was destined to be a profoundly lonely child, my mother was tending shrubs of raspberries, blackberries, sprawling vines of kudzu and english ivy and concord grapes, with sprinkles of japanese knotweed and oriental bittersweet, and of course the now perfectly maintained carpet of mint that had begun this obsession. all were perfectly controlled, clipped and weeded to the point of sterility. i remember feeling an odd sort of horror at the sight of those perfectly manicured plots, as if my mother had grasped something wild and untameable and cut it down until it was simply too weak to resist. by the time i moved out, realising there is a stark difference between inherent loneliness and malicious neglect, she was spending all of her time outside. i would hear her stumble inside, trailing dirt wherever she went, hear the creak of her worn bedframe as she collapsed into sleep, not even bothering to shower or change. by the time i was awake in the morning she was out again, the house an ever increasingly grimy mess, black soil soaked into the grout like mould, and yet there she was, keeping the garden so unnaturally, unsettlingly neat that it didnt even seem real anymore. last i heard of her - and i dont hear from her often, mind - she had set up an old mattress outside to pass out on without needing to go in. i asked what she did about rain, about food, about hail, but she just told me i didnt understand, i could never understand, that some things are more important than yourself, that some things are worth letting yourself wither for. i remember asking what she ate, since she never went into the house, but she just continued telling me i didnt understand, i could never understand, this was everything to her, that some things are worth more than you, worth losing yourself for, worth changing for in ways you never thought possible. i tried to ask what she meant, but i remembered her when i was young, sitting outside, picking off beetles and snails and slugs one by one. it struck me that i never thought about what she may have been doing with them once she had picked them off the plants. "something worth losing yourself for"... i decided not to ask about what, exactly, she had been eating all this time, and i havent seen her since. shes started sending me packages, though. fresh mint, blackberries, raspberries, concord grapes. they look beautiful, beyond picturesque, but i cant bring myself to eat them. i dont like how perfect they look. i dont like how excited my mother sounds over the phone when i lie and say they were wonderful. im thinking of moving, maybe. i dont want any more packages. i feel bad, but... i dont like knowing that im within driving distance of her. i dont want to find out what she might say - what she might do - if she realises ive been tossing out her gifts.