(Watching children shriek and play on the lawn of a local lakeside restaurant last weekend evoked childhood memories of summer evenings in my old Minneapolis neighborhood.)
My mother’s yard was full of flowers and rowdy, rambunctious kids.
Not a likely combination, but it worked.
Every summer night, the neighborhood kids congregated at our house to play games. Our large lawn and garden beds offered hiding places irresistible to children.
Kids and flowers should be a dangerous combination, at least for the flowers, but we all co-existed, even thrived, in Mom’s yard.
By all rights, her flowers should have been decimated by our eager and careless feet. But they weren’t.
Some of my best childhood memories are of warm evenings when all sizes and shapes of children gathered on our front porch. Perching on its thick stucco half walls and red brick stairs, we decided what to play.
Soon shrieks of “Wolf and Sheep” and “Hide and Seek” or “Star Light-Star Bright” filled the air as we ran, shouted and hid behind the blue morning glory vines or under the huge hydrangea bushes whose white flowers drooped to the ground.
We spent hours streaking across the front yard, crashing down its steep banks to the sidewalk. We sidestepped around the slender crabapple tree trunk, dodged behind the garage and startled the bats swooping through the dark blue evening sky.
We never gave as much as a fleeting thought to my poor mother’s garden flowers.
We played until parents called us in.
“Sharon.”
“Naomi.”
Sonja, who lived too far down the block for her mother to call, headed home when other parent’s voices sang out of the dark. Tired and happy, we suddenly realized that night had settled in the elm trees and the windows of quiet neighborhood houses were yellow with lamplight.
Later, after a quick bath rinsed away all sweat and grime, I would crawl between fresh sheets and drop off to sleep, anticipating the joys of tomorrow.
Meanwhile, below my bedroom window, the slight creak of a knob sounded as Mom turned on the garden hose and watered her gardens late into the now-quiet summer night. I thought nothing of it. Mom was simply watering her flowers.
Methodically she watered the masses of crimson moss roses that grew alongside our back step, moved on to the Popsicle-orange oriental poppies and ended with the rainbow colored gladiolas that leaned against the brick foundation.
Looking back, I realize she must have enjoyed the stillness of the night as much as we children had enjoyed the robustness of our lively games.
Allowing a gang of noisy kids to trample through her yard must have evoked the sympathy of the garden gods for there was never any doubt—my mother’s flowers were the prettiest in the neighborhood.
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