There is a picture of my mother. She’s kneeling in front of a bed of roses in the garden of our Los Angeles home, one hand holding down a huge straw hat against an obvious gust of wind, the other clutching weeds and roots she’s just dug up from the moist soil. Her long, curly hair is blowing around her face, and she’s smiling and she looks beautiful and impossibly happy.

I had that picture in my bedroom, and it was my favorite for many years, before I learned that my mother hated gardening. That every plant she ever touched died. That the beautiful day in that beautiful garden was a fluke. That at the time that picture was taken, she was probably already thinking of another life, another place, far from me, far from us.