A Mother Must Believe

"Love, we all know, is always followed by something else—the deep desire to protect."

It’s evening in late spring, and I slip out to the garden after dinner—barefoot and alone—like I’m running toward a lover. The buzz of bumblebees around the honeysuckle is my siren song. Aromas of lilacs and peonies and white clover are the pheromones. A golden sparkle from the sun’s last stretch of light lands on all the early growing plants like enchanting fairy dust. Come, the garden calls. Come be where it’s lovely and beautiful and completely void of impossible-to-solve parenting problems.

Don’t tell my kids this, but my garden is my favorite child. Her needs are so much more simple and straightforward. Give me water and room to grow, and I’ll be fine, she says. She is patient with me while I learn, forgiving when I make a mistake. My hard work is met by her heaping gifts of gratitude in midsummer’s blooms and end of season harvest. Her growth is predictable and steady. I love her for this. Sometimes it’s nice to know you can work hard to nurture growth, and not worry the recipient of your care will walk off one day into the scary world doing who knows what with who knows whom without you there to remind her to look both ways before crossing the street and did she remember her helmet and who told her she could grow up anyway?

Okay, so I’m working through something.

“Hey mom, so, um … ” This was how my oldest daughter, Caroline, greeted me in the kitchen earlier this evening while I chopped vegetables for a salad. It’s the kind of greeting that always makes you pause. The ellipses lingered in the air like a shift in pressure before a spring rain. A question was brewing.

I glanced up from my chopping for a second to let her know I was listening, before looking back down to my cutting board. The eye contact was too much in that moment. We both needed space for the conversation to bloom.

“I was wondering,” she continued slowly, taking a seat on the stepping stool in the corner, squirming to get comfortable, “if maybe sometime I could have a sleepover with my friends, just one friend, here or there, or wherever you want is fine.” She tucked her long legs up under her chin and smoothed the strands of hair around her face. The legs that showed me she was growing older by the day, the face that still reminded me of the little girl she used to be—all of her, all at once.

This wasn’t the first time Caroline had asked me for room to spread her wings. There have been other questions, too. Can I ride my bike in the neighborhood? Can I walk to the park with friends? And these new questions from her give rise to a new question of my own: Will she be safe?

I’ve often considered myself a relaxed parent when it comes to safety—babyproofing, choking hazards, and the like. I suppose I figured as long as my children were near, they were fine. But now at nearly ten years old, Caroline asks to stretch beyond my reach. I’m not sure what to do with the worry that comes along with that. And so I do what I do with the rest of my problems—I deflect (“let me think about it, Caroline”) and I escape. To the garden I go.

With a deep sigh, I settle into the chairs in the corner overlooking the yard, hoping to take a minute for reflection. Maybe there are answers in the things that grow. Unfortunately the respite does not last long.

Hopping through the garden gate arrives a big, fat, fluffy rabbit. She pauses in the grassy clover when she sees me. Her gaze locks with mine, her eyes wide and wary. There’s a look in them I feel like I recognize. It must be hunger.

My eyes follow her as she turns and hops deeper into the yard where the pea shoots are planted. The audacity! Snacking away on my vegetables right in front of me!

I go full Mr. McGregor on her.

“Scat, you pesky rabbit!” I yell, flailing the nonexistent rake in my hand until I eventually scare her away with my approach. Poking around to see if she ate anything, I notice the mulch behind the garden box looks disturbed. Upon closer attention I see behind the pea plants a hole has been dug under the box. Was this … gasp … a nest?

With a growing sense of dread I gently nudge aside the mulch. When I spot soft tufts of fur peeking out, I recoil.

BABY BUNNIES!

I’d like to tell you this is when I squeal in delight and feel a rush of motherly love. The truth is, that’s not what happens. No, I’m piqued. Remember, I love this garden like I love my own children. I see bunnies and my mind immediately writes a future scene where the beasts make a salad bar of my precious plant babies. These creatures are a menace to my place of refuge and I need to do something about it.

Except, I’m not sure what “that” is, so I do what I do with my other problems and hope if I leave them alone, they’ll disappear.

They don’t. In fact, the bunnies grow bigger, as is seemingly the case with all things in my life these days. And as the bunnies grow, so do my feelings for them. With each peek into the nest the eyes get bigger and the noses twitchier and the wiggly pile of fur snugglier. All the while my indignation becomes curiosity, softening to warmth until, well, you see where this is going.

I fall in love. And just like that, a new story blooms in my mind, one where a mother rabbit chose my garden as the safe place for her children to grow, and I get to bear witness to their great becoming as they hop off into this beautiful world knowing they are fully loved. What a lovely story.

Love, we all know, is always followed by something else—the deep desire to protect.

A whole week goes by before I finally spot the mother rabbit again. I am putting my children to bed and from out my window I watch as she hops over to the nest, leans her front paws on top of the garden box where the hungry little fur balls nuzzle up to her chest and start nursing. After a while she nudges her babies into the nest, her little nose and mouth quivering like she’s reading them a bedtime story. Then she pulls the mulch back around their bodies and tucks them in before hopping away.

What is she doing? I wonder in horror. Just walking away? Leaving them all alone?

A quick internet search tells me that a mother rabbit only returns to her babies once a day, usually at dusk, to feed and check on her young. She continues this until they are old enough, strong enough, to hop away on their own, to care for themselves. Once a day. Can you imagine?

I recall now the look I saw in the mother rabbit that first night we met. I realize now it wasn’t hunger I saw. It was a desperate plea for protection.

Suddenly an immense amount of pressure settles around me. Who will keep them safe while she is out of reach?

It must be me.

All week, I take it upon myself to guard my garden-turned-postpartum-nursery. I check their growth, leave trails of clover on the mulch, even herd them back to the nest when their legs grow more curious. Every night the mother returns, and every night I wonder how she does it. Does she worry about them while she’s away? Does she wonder if she gave them enough food or if they will keep warm?

Does the mother wonder if her babies will be safe?

It goes on like this for days—the mother returning to her babies each evening, me checking their nest all the other hours of the day, obsessively. Until one morning, after I send the human kids off to school and I’m free to make my daily bunny rounds, I slip barefoot out the door, through the grass, around the corner, to the nest, only to find … it’s empty.

My eyes dart back and forth. I scan for signs. Nothing.

Of course, I assume the worst. I know the risks. I know the predators. A mother knows every scenario. We write these scenes in our head every single day, every time we send our children out into the world—out of our reach. Something terrible happened, and now they’re gone.

With every footstep back to my house, instead of feeling comforted by my garden’s beauty, I am haunted by my heartbreak. Why did I have to fall in love with those silly bunnies anyway? Thinking of my own children now, I fight the surging wish to run to them, bring them home, keep them with me. No, Caroline, I think, I’m sorry but you can’t go with your friends. Not now. It’s not safe.

The morning sun casts light on the dew drops in the grass and despite my breaking heart, I can’t help but be welcomed back by the beauty I love so much. It’s then I think of the mother rabbit. I consider how she chose this nest—my garden—to be her children’s home. Here among the bees and the blooms and the growing pea shoots she believed she had found shelter for her children. Will she return only to discover she was wrong?

Or would she believe in a different story?

What if the worst didn’t come to be? What if the bunnies just grew strong enough, old enough now to hop away and explore the world on their own, as they were meant to do? What if they really were safe?

I’ll never know the answer. I don’t have a mother rabbit’s instinct. I will always wonder. I will always worry.

But I also want to believe in a different story. I want to believe the bunnies are okay just like I want to believe my children will be okay. I want to believe in things that grow. I want to believe in falling in love. I want to believe the world is more beautiful than I can understand right now. I want to believe in a different story because the alternative is too much to bear. Maybe a mother always wonders and always worries, but a mother also always loves. And to love is to believe in something better.

I must believe in a different story.

I don’t yet know how, but I have to try.

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Guest essay written by

Rachel Nevergall

. Rachel is a therapist, writer, maker, and dreamer living in Chicago with her college sweetheart and their three kids. Rachel wants to be defined by the things she loves, like an impossible to carry stack of library books, the many layers to a well mixed cocktail, growing vegetables from tiny seeds, and obsessing over the complexity of a Taylor Swift lyric. You can follow along with Rachel and her ever growing catalog of muses in her Substack newsletter, Speaking Of, on her podcast, Swift and Swigs with Sibs, or the Instagram grid, of course.

This essay was first published on Coffee + Crumbs. Be sure to check out our spring collection!

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