Violets And Vanilla Beans

She was bound to her parents somehow, in some way that other girls in her generation were not. Though she wanted to study other things, she chose to study what her parents recommended, and when they also urged her to get her master's degree in the same field, she did it, without love or passion. She married the young man her parents recommended, though she loved another. She smiled only once during her wedding and reception, and that was when she danced with her father. She refused to dance with her new husband; and she sat, separated from all the others her age who were dancing together in a circle, and she never smiled. She cried during her whole honeymoon, and when she and her husband returned, she later told her mother-in-law, she never felt the house they shared was hers. She spent most of her time at her parents' house.

After the children were born, she finally made her house her home; but she withheld her children from her husband's parents most of the time, and lavished them on her own parents. Her mother-in-law, who had been a good daughter-in-law to her own husband's mother, was mystified. Her son followed his wife's lead, and so there was often sadness in the mother-in-law's heart. She wasn't the kind to cause big dramatics; she humbled herself and waited and prayed, and every so often there was a visit. The briefest of sweet times with the grandchildren, a chance to tell her son and her daughter-in-law that she loved them...and then the silence. The emotional Antarctic, where an explorer of the heart could freeze to death if she weren't very careful and very lucky. The mother-in-law relied, in her soul, on God. She sometimes had visits with Jesus, and that stayed her.

One morning the mother-in-law woke up and saw things in a new way. She understood that the daughter-in-law was nearing her time of spiritual awakening. She perceived that by holding thoughts of flowers when her daughter-in-law came to mind, flowers such as the little white violets with a touch of blue that bloomed in the spring, or the lovely white orchid which produces the fragrant vanilla bean, she could assist the younger woman's soul. She checked intutitively, to make certain that such thoughts would be welcome, and found it to be so. Her heart lightened its load. She began to remember to smile more often.

That was some fifty years ago, at least. The daughter-in-law's parents never knew how to release her, to encourage her to fly; but their daughter grew beyond their container and became a new person. She never abandoned her parents; she simply became her self, and that was something they never really understood. They loved her no matter what - but in being part of her growing, they began to learn more about love than perhaps they wanted to, and they became forgetful. That was all right. Their daughter kept on growing. Her father died, and was followed soon after by her mother. Their passing somehow steadied their daughter's heart in a way that all their holding on to her had never accomplished. Their daughter learned still more about love.

Sometime after she had buried her parents, and after the children were finished with the schooling they had chosen, and were launched in the world of courtships and careers; and after her husband's recovery from his heart surgery, the daughter-in-law was visiting with her old mother-in-law over soup and sandwiches and a little pie. The old woman's waiting and prayers and "I love you's" had made a difference in her life, the younger woman was telling her. She could feel when her mother-in-law was praying for her, she said; and she always felt that to be a help. She told the old woman how much she appreciated her. When they said goodbye, the mother-in-law said, "I love you."

It wasn't too long after that that the old woman went to sleep in her favorite chair one winter day, and got so busy visiting long-gone friends and relatives on the other side that she forgot to wake up anymore on this side. The phone calls went out; the old woman's children and grandchildren and her remaining siblings and her in-laws and remaining friends gathered for their last farewells. The daughter-in-law saw to it that things went smoothly. She was glad that she had had a chance to thank her mother-in-law while the old woman could hear and understand and receive her thanks. The old woman's memorial service brought, surprisingly perhaps, a smile to the face of the younger woman, the one who had barely been able to smile during her own wedding.

In the months that followed, the daughter-in-law felt, at times, that her mother-in-law was present with her, and was sometimes even speaking with her in that calm, gentle way she had. In the spring, the daughter-in-law transplanted a clump of little white violets to her mother-in-law's grave, and lit a vanilla-scented candle there, too, remembering how wonderful the old woman's house always smelled when she was baking something special for a family gathering. The grave, the memories, the flowers, the candle - they were enough. The daughter-in-law was a wealthy, wealthy woman in her heart.