The gift my mother’s dementia gave me was her return to innocence. In the last year of her life, she embodied a way of being in the world that had only terrified me before. With all her encultured inhibitions gone, she lived purely in the present moment, responding freely with only her emotions and feelings. And when she felt safe, there was complete trust and unconditional love. A beautifully free wildness gleamed in her eyes when she was happy, the kind I remember seeing in my children’s eyes when they were very young.
The flowers live this way too, completely open to us. And like with my mother, and my young boys, the flowers respond more deeply to us when they sense our hearts are open to them. This type of openness is an innocence that is so much more than the concept of “unspoiled” that is so often equated with innocence in our culture. Rather, this is the innocence of the embodied knowing of our deep worthiness. The innocence of knowing the innate beauty of everything. The innocence of being totally present in every moment and being wholly ourselves. My mother’s dementia took me into this innocence with her—unknowingly preparing me to immerse myself in the flowers’ presence and hear their wisdom.
As the years have passed since my mother’s death, I have come to see her, in her last year, like the Queen Anne’s lace in my garden—full of wild innocence amid the more structured community around her. And like my dear magnolia—full of unconditional love. The Queen Anne’s lace has come to be the flower that speaks to me directly of this innocence.
When Queen Anne’s lace sparkles in the sun and catches our eye, they encourage us to ask, “What is innocence?” What is this state of being that we once had, then lost, and still want? What if losing innocence was when we started to doubt our worthiness? Or when we allow shame to keep us from being our authentic selves? What if innocence is the gift of embracing life without reservation or fear?
When I was six-years-old I went to Girl Scout camp for the first time and one of my most vivid memories is of running through a meadow full of Queen Anne’s lace that was almost as tall as I was. This whole field of flowers was up on a hill called “the knoll,” and only the path leading up the hill and a central gathering circle at the top were mowed. The rest of the hill was full of Queen Anne’s lace, sparkling in the sun, and dotted with the blue faces of chicory among the other grasses and wildflowers. I remember the heads of the Queen Anne’s lace bowing down to me, offering themselves to me, calling out to me. I took their essence into my heart as that young girl, and now, when I recall this memory, it feels as if I am recollecting lifetimes of dancing with them. Lifetimes of knowing the innocent worthiness of their upturned faces to the sun.
Our culture tells us in a myriad of ways that we must accomplish a task, get an education, or buy a product, to be good enough, to be worthy of approval and love. What would it be like to know without a doubt, as Queen Anne’s lace and chicory do, that we are worthy of deep love and approval just the way we are?
Following an impulse one fall, I planted both Queen Anne’s lace and chicory seeds in the raised beds in my garden because I was tired of only seeing them on the roadsides and wanted to have them closer to me. The next spring, I had an abundance of chicory greens for my salads, interwoven with the feathery greens of the young Queen Anne’s lace. By midsummer their flowers were exuberant, taller than me and bursting with so much wildness—taking much more than their fair share of space in my small, raised beds.
When chicory’s sky-blue flowers opened to the morning sun and wove themselves among the Queen Anne’s lace’s upturned flowerheads, the glories of their very aliveness broke open my heart. I had invited their wildness into my garden, and I loved watching them as they burst forth with abandon, their bright faces lighting up like the huge smiles my mother had shared with me her last year.
It is hard to believe these beautiful flowers came to be called weeds, instead of having been invited into our gardens long ago. Most likely they were kept out because they would not give up their rowdy ways, preferring to be wild and free and refusing to be a cut flower in a vase. Rather, they prefer to grow along roadsides everywhere, weaving their innocent worthiness into the lives of almost everyone everywhere.
Queen Anne’s lace is the wild ancestor of the domesticated carrot, and their roots even smell like carrots. Instead of putting all their energy into their roots as carrots do, they prefer to concentrate their energy on their beautiful flower. Interestingly, they got their name from Queen Anne of England who was an expert lace maker. One day while tatting lace she pricked her finger, and a drop of her blood made the single tiny dark red floret in the center of the flattened cluster of their tiny white flowers that look like woven lace. Lace is a beautiful cloth made by twisting thin thread into delicate patterns that you can see through. It has historically been tied to many cultural ideals of innocence that became overly moral and rigid, especially in the Victorian purity culture. But fortunately, Queen Anne’s lace takes innocence back to their wild roots for us.
Their soul-mate, chicory, was seen in pre-Celtic times, as the embodiment of the goddess of vegetation, the lovely daughter of Mother Earth. They always watched for the Sun God with their radiant blue eyes. It’s not surprising then, that an old name common in the Middle Ages for chicory was Sun’s Bride.
Chicory says to us: “My bright blue faces welcome the sun, letting you know you are worthy of being loved for who you are, just as the sun loves me each morning. I am the Sun’s Bride.”
Each time I see Queen Anne’s lace and chicory blooming wildly together near my magnolia trees, I see the big wide grin on my mother’s face in her last year—wild and feral and full of unconditional love for me. This is the innocence imbedded in the innate worthiness that I was born with. An innocence I need to regain—a way of seeing and being in the world that will allow me to bring forth what is so urgently blossoming in me.
I see my Mom as I read this tonight. She died from Alzheimer’s Christmas Eve 2019. I had Queen Ann’s Lace come up unexpectedly at the end of my courtyard. I thought it was a gift from the birds. Now perhaps it was my Mom.. or even a collaborative effort between both worlds.
Thank you so much for sharing your gift. The flowers have definitely spoken to me tonight🤍
Such a lovely embodiment woven with these beautiful flowers. I love to hear of your perspective and connection with them, and see how they come alive in my own interactions with them. Deeply enriching. Seeing their stories and innate aliveness. <3