“I lavender, Mommy?” My three-year-old son, Lincoln, asks as he labors with a spade to create a hole in the mounded soil for a lavender plant. Leaning on my shovel, I watch him work. It’s a warm day for May. Lincoln wears only pants. No shirt, no shoes. His face is streaked with dirt. He’s imprinted by nature, as I had been as an outdoor child. Giving him fresh air was a big part of leaving New York City for the countryside of Virginia.

Mom and I had purchased our first lavender plants the week before and were planting them in the field in front of my parents’ home. We bought 50 plants at six dollars each from a well-known nursery an hour’s drive away. Another 50 plants we scooped up for three dollars a piece at a local nursery. The farmer next door had prepared the field by plowing and harrowing it. Between the plants and the tractor work our initial investment was $600. And we had spent some back-breaking days mounting the dirt into two-foot-high rows.

“How close should we put these, Mom?” I ask.

Mom is standing next to me holding a shovel. “Well, the book says about six feet apart so, let’s use this shovel to measure…that way when they get big the air can circulate around them.”

“Hmm…that’s pretty far apart. Will we have enough room for all the plants?” We look over to the collection of 100 baby lavender plants in trays by the gate. She was right as usual. We used the shovel measure and put them all in the ground. it was the spring of 2002.

By June the lavender plants had jumped up six inches. It was exciting to watch them thrive. Every other day we dragged the hose around to water them. To celebrate our first lavender season, each young plants sent up about twenty shoots which matured into lovely purple blooms by late-June. Their delicate long stems rose about eight inches from the bushy part of the plant and the buds changed slowly from green, to green with purple tints, to having some purple nubs which then unfolded into fragrant lavender florets. Lincoln and his cousins spent a lot of time picking flowers against our wishes and chasing the butterflies flocking to the plants. By the end of June, we harvested and dried our lavender and turned it into gifts for pleased neighbors and friends.

When Mom and I surveyed our baby lavender farm, we were excited. After our twenty years apart, my youth had largely passed, and Mom was just into her sixties. We also surveyed each other, reveled in our similarities, such as our indefatigable close attention to things we were devoted to, like flowers and children. We didn’t judge too harshly our differences. My mother tended to live her life more in reality than her dreamy oldest child who imagined she might live her life as though she were the character in a book. This trait led me into some adventures and misadventures in my younger years. We were the human embodiment of the Demeter and Persephone myth. Unlike Persephone, who was stolen by Hades, I went willingly to dark places. Like Demeter, my mother was an agrarian goddess, with an amazing ability to nurture plants and children. It would be my return home, and time with my mother, which would ground me again, as only sunshine and love can do.

My partner, Paul, and our son, Lincoln, had moved away from New York City two months before 9/11. Our ten years in New York City had been filled so many great adventures and, as is the nature of living in NYC, a lot of stress. Moving back to Virginia, we hoped, would apply a geographical fix to our relationship problems. Does that ever work?

In Catlett, Virginia on the twenty acres of my parents’ property, we were dazzled by the sunlight on the plain fields, refreshed by sweet-smelling air and heartened by the people who very often used “please” and “thank you” in everyday conversation. Paul and I had cleared a lot of money when we sold our Brooklyn home. When we landed back home on the quiet farm with my loving parents, few bills and a full bank account, we loafed.

Catlett had its advantages, but I left most of my friends and my hairdresser, Stephen, behind in the city. Every few months I’d return for some girl time with friends and a chicer haircut than I really needed for Catlett. On one visit, Stephen and I chatted about my move and his recent purchase of a home with his boyfriend. They had opened a shop with many features: a small hair salon/spa, gift shop, and home-decor shop specializing in aromatherapy and herbs.

“Ok, Steven,” I said looking at him through my wet bangs in the large elaborate gold mirror in his East Village salon. “I’ve been thinking of growing something herbal on my Mom and Dad’s farm while I’m living there. What do you think would sell well?”

“Hmm…,” he thought for a moment, “I would say lavender or rosemary.”

“Lavender,” I thought, liking the sound of it more than rosemary. I recalled a trip to France with my mother and sister that we had bought some lavender. I remembered it had been expensive. While I lazed around my parents’ house that first summer, I had wondered aloud a few times what herbs or flowers we, my mother and I, might grow for profit. Later I came across a magazine article about a lavender farm in Texas which reaffirmed my interest in lavender. Everything I read about lavender seemed to bode well for it being an enjoyable and lucrative crop. The salient feature of lavender, aside from the multitude of pretty purple blooms per plant, is a clean and decidedly un-sweet scent best known for its ability to aid relaxation and sleep. The dried blooms and the essential oil made from distilling fresh blooms can be used in a large variety of products. Mom and I looked through purchased lavender books to see what we might craft from the dried lavender in addition to raising the plants for fresh bouquets. After twenty years of living apart, we were enjoying our connection with each other and with the lavender project. We pored over information and discussed it incessantly--to the point of annoyance for the rest of the family. During one of our lavender conversations, which went on to long for the men in the family, they started to chime, “Lavender, lavender, lavender, lavender, lavender,” in mock girlish voices.

“Laugh if you want, but his is going to be great,” I retorted.

Mom and I were at the start of a journey powered by flowers. She had always been a wonder-mom. With five active children, she’d had twenty years of full-time homemaking starting in her very early 20’s. She had never gotten to use her college degree to teach as she’d hoped she would after college. So now, in her early sixties, a chance to put many of her skills to use, outside the home, developed. To create something. To build a business.

My family had never raised any traditional crops other than an over-optimistically large garden behind the house and, once or twice, a small field of sweet corn. My parents’ farm was more of a farmette than a farm. The house was a modern-style brick rancher the previous owner had built after purposely burning down the old farmhouse on the property. A small rustic barn and a few outbuildings survived the exercise by the local fire department, and we christened our farm “Oak Springs” for the large oak slowly dying next to a small muddy spring-fed pond. Oak Springs was home to a variety of creatures: a horse, a pony, calves, a bunch of chickens, some crazy-acting roosters, a hutch full of rabbits, a few dogs, countless cats and a family of seven humans.

My mother, who had been raised on a farm, dragged her reluctant husband and five children from their contented suburban lives to experience country living and to remove distractions from our connection to each other. We were removed from friend and quick commutes. Hour and a half school bus routes were an endurance test. I was fourteen and not entirely happy about the move. It was on this farm that I weathered my teenage years before gladly going off to college. After escaping back to civilization, I swore off the countryside for good. I thought.

That was the 70’s and now in the aughts I was back after all. Enjoying unlimited time with my child.

“What are you doing?” I called from the couch in my parents’ small family room, not wanting to get up and look into the front hall, tired from a day of working in the lavender field. There was no answer to my inquiry, so I got up.

Lincoln had the screen door pushed open and he was yelling toddler babble into the cool night air. His voice had an edge of reprimand and he was pointing a finger. When he saw me, he let the screen door slap shut and walked away, only to turn quickly on his heels, rush back to the door, push it open and started shouting again.

“Who are you yelling at?” I asked trying to peep into the dark front yard to see if anyone were there.

“The moon, Mommy!” as if it were obvious one could have an argument with the moon. I looked out the door and saw the moon’s full face was oppressive as it hung low above the trees.

“Well come on, you are letting the cold air in and it’s time for bed.” We headed back toward my old bedroom at the end of the hall, to put on pajamas and read some books. Bedtime reading was one of my favorite parts of parenting, because it had to do with books. My relationship with books had always been strong and steady. Books gave me the world. When reading I could go anywhere. They informed my views on almost everything, friendships, religion, cuisine, writing, government, travel, loss and love. Books helped me define myself. Because I was a reader, I became a writer. Books were the friends with whom I spent most of my teenage years.

Lincoln was a long-awaited child. He was born in my very late 30’s. I kissed his fat cheeks 50 times a day and doted on him. After I put Lincoln to bed in his own room, which had been my brothers’ room in the old days, I want back to my old bedroom. I was alone, as Paul was visiting his family and friends in Norfolk, Virginia. Settling down in bed, I listened to the sound of the television at the other end of the house. My Dad liked to watch late night shows. He was a night owl. And Paul was a night owl. He was a musician. And Paul was a musician. These things they shared. But while my father had made a sacrifices for his wife and children, Paul was less interested in becoming supportive in the ways I wanted him to be. It was the classic relationship conundrum of choosing a person for who they are and then expecting them to change and become someone else. After being focused on Paul and his musical dreams for years, as I approached middle age, I wanted to change the focus. To myself. To put to use my creative skills to build something. And leave some sort of legacy. The teenager with dreams of escape, would have been shocked to find her future lay in rural Virginia, running a flower farm with her mother.

Lying in my bed that night, I picked up a book about lavender. I read in the book that lavender signifies luck. Perhaps, I thought, lavender would bring luck in figuring out the right thing to do next. At the late age of forty-two, I still needed to decide who I was going to be. I kept reading.

The Call to Adventure