The wisdom of Mother Nature
Grand life lessons and small nuggets of wisdom
Love is spending the entire weekend watching someone else’s favourite (and boring) TV show. This is the conclusion I was forced to draw recently when I sat with my husband and, over the course of two days, watched an ungodly amount of National Geographic.
I now know more about strawberry farming, ducks and the mating preference of a certain African lion than I care to. The thing was, he hadn’t been feeling well (Hums, not the lion) and going out was out of the question. Curling up on the couch seemed to be the preferred way to spend time and some nutty notion of wifely sympathy led me to hang out with him.
It was Friday night, a freshly baked apple pie was before me, a sniffling husband was beside me and a yawn-inducing show about fruit farmers in Iowa was just starting. “Really? This is how we’re going to spend the evening?” was my first offer.
“What is the point of this? You’re not really learning anything. What is it with boys and fact collecting?” was the continuation of my gripe, as I dug into my tangy green apple pie and ice cream.
Hums offered me a corner of the blanket and a suggestion: “You’re all about grand life lessons. Why don’t you see if you can extract some nugget of wisdom from these shows? You know, something about Mother Nature being the ultimate mother?” I looked carefully to see if he was being smug or condescending because it sure sounded like it but the stuffy nose and puffy eyes made his expressions difficult to decipher.
Since it’s never a good idea to admit to your husband that he’s right, I feigned total disinterest. But since I am all about grand life lessons and I love flaunting newfound knowledge, I secretly paid attention. And now for your pleasure, here are two things I learned:
In early spring, when the very first strawberry plants bear fruit in the farms of Iowa, the hardworking farmers snip away ruthlessly at every single plant, not caring if the fruit is fully ripe or not. The justification for this is that if one wants the everbearing berries to produce heavily throughout the season, the farmer must choose to sacrifice the first harvest so that all the plant’s energy can be efficiently invested into producing later crops. So the farmers pick, prune, trim, pare and cut out even that which seems good, in order to invest in the best.
This is what crops need in early spring. If that’s not an excellent analogy for the sacrifices young mothers make in their lives, I don’t know what is. You let go of dreams, you trim back activities, interests, friendships and commitments because you have faith in a later harvest. And it’s hard. It’s hard to always remember why you are pruning. There is a counter-intuitiveness to it: plucking off what looks so good and is right before you in the hope of an unknown yield some time in the future.
Some might even think it foolish to ignore the calls of the present. But that’s exactly what we parents do for our kids. We gather up our courage and do the hard work today in order to make a difference tomorrow. The law of the garden is the law of life: Early sacrifice for later bounty.
And from strawberry fields, we make the leap to ducks. One of the shows, Hums and I ‘enjoyed’ talked about the lifestyles of mallard ducks. During most of the show, I was busy convincing Hums that the little ducklings were looking exactly like Beti (ever since I’ve become a mom, any sort of baby reminds me of my own kids) but then the soothing baritones of the voiceover said one line that got me: “Mother ducks pluck feathers from their own chests to line their nests.”
I had assumed nests were lined with leftovers, discarded feathers, the scraps, the junky feathers. I thought all birds, ducks included, picked feathers up from what was laying about. Now I learn, a mother duck plucks each feather out from her very own heart, lining her nest with the best bits of herself. Baby ducks live and sleep in their mother’s sacrifice.
This kind of kills me because not only is it exactly what life is like with kids but it’s also a reminder of how I’m actually supposed to be living. When Beta asks me to fingerpaint and I have to put down my book at a crucial twist in the plot: Pluck.
When Beti wants to sleep immediately after I come out of the shower and I have no time to put lotion on my feet: Pluck. When I am exhausted by the evening and am just about to fall asleep but Beta suddenly wants to eat a boiled egg: Pluck. Some feathers for this nest have been hard to pluck but the ducks remind me: Mothers have to give the best of themselves.
By the time, the duck show ends, I’ve finished my dessert. When Hums sees my introspective face as I scribble some notes down, he is triumphant! “You found something to write about, didn’t you? I was right, right?”
And that is how, right after finishing my apple pie, I went on to eat humble pie. It was just as tart.
Hiba Masood is a stay-at-home mother to four-year-old Beta and one-year-old Beti. Writing about parenting affords her time away from actually doing it.
Published in The Express Tribune, Ms T, November 25th, 2012.
I now know more about strawberry farming, ducks and the mating preference of a certain African lion than I care to. The thing was, he hadn’t been feeling well (Hums, not the lion) and going out was out of the question. Curling up on the couch seemed to be the preferred way to spend time and some nutty notion of wifely sympathy led me to hang out with him.
It was Friday night, a freshly baked apple pie was before me, a sniffling husband was beside me and a yawn-inducing show about fruit farmers in Iowa was just starting. “Really? This is how we’re going to spend the evening?” was my first offer.
“What is the point of this? You’re not really learning anything. What is it with boys and fact collecting?” was the continuation of my gripe, as I dug into my tangy green apple pie and ice cream.
Hums offered me a corner of the blanket and a suggestion: “You’re all about grand life lessons. Why don’t you see if you can extract some nugget of wisdom from these shows? You know, something about Mother Nature being the ultimate mother?” I looked carefully to see if he was being smug or condescending because it sure sounded like it but the stuffy nose and puffy eyes made his expressions difficult to decipher.
Since it’s never a good idea to admit to your husband that he’s right, I feigned total disinterest. But since I am all about grand life lessons and I love flaunting newfound knowledge, I secretly paid attention. And now for your pleasure, here are two things I learned:
In early spring, when the very first strawberry plants bear fruit in the farms of Iowa, the hardworking farmers snip away ruthlessly at every single plant, not caring if the fruit is fully ripe or not. The justification for this is that if one wants the everbearing berries to produce heavily throughout the season, the farmer must choose to sacrifice the first harvest so that all the plant’s energy can be efficiently invested into producing later crops. So the farmers pick, prune, trim, pare and cut out even that which seems good, in order to invest in the best.
This is what crops need in early spring. If that’s not an excellent analogy for the sacrifices young mothers make in their lives, I don’t know what is. You let go of dreams, you trim back activities, interests, friendships and commitments because you have faith in a later harvest. And it’s hard. It’s hard to always remember why you are pruning. There is a counter-intuitiveness to it: plucking off what looks so good and is right before you in the hope of an unknown yield some time in the future.
Some might even think it foolish to ignore the calls of the present. But that’s exactly what we parents do for our kids. We gather up our courage and do the hard work today in order to make a difference tomorrow. The law of the garden is the law of life: Early sacrifice for later bounty.
And from strawberry fields, we make the leap to ducks. One of the shows, Hums and I ‘enjoyed’ talked about the lifestyles of mallard ducks. During most of the show, I was busy convincing Hums that the little ducklings were looking exactly like Beti (ever since I’ve become a mom, any sort of baby reminds me of my own kids) but then the soothing baritones of the voiceover said one line that got me: “Mother ducks pluck feathers from their own chests to line their nests.”
I had assumed nests were lined with leftovers, discarded feathers, the scraps, the junky feathers. I thought all birds, ducks included, picked feathers up from what was laying about. Now I learn, a mother duck plucks each feather out from her very own heart, lining her nest with the best bits of herself. Baby ducks live and sleep in their mother’s sacrifice.
This kind of kills me because not only is it exactly what life is like with kids but it’s also a reminder of how I’m actually supposed to be living. When Beta asks me to fingerpaint and I have to put down my book at a crucial twist in the plot: Pluck.
When Beti wants to sleep immediately after I come out of the shower and I have no time to put lotion on my feet: Pluck. When I am exhausted by the evening and am just about to fall asleep but Beta suddenly wants to eat a boiled egg: Pluck. Some feathers for this nest have been hard to pluck but the ducks remind me: Mothers have to give the best of themselves.
By the time, the duck show ends, I’ve finished my dessert. When Hums sees my introspective face as I scribble some notes down, he is triumphant! “You found something to write about, didn’t you? I was right, right?”
And that is how, right after finishing my apple pie, I went on to eat humble pie. It was just as tart.
Hiba Masood is a stay-at-home mother to four-year-old Beta and one-year-old Beti. Writing about parenting affords her time away from actually doing it.
Connect with Drama Mama online at www.facebook.com/etdramamama for more thoughts on the crazy ride of motherhood
Published in The Express Tribune, Ms T, November 25th, 2012.