Worms for Mother

“Oh joy!” beamed Emma’s mother, as she lifted a container of earthworms.

“Oh, boy!” moaned Emma. Emma didn’t like earthworms, not one bit. She didn’t like gardening either, but she’d promised her mom she would help with planting today. She could never break a promise to her mom – not on Mother’s Day!

“Look, Emma, look at these beautiful creatures,” said her mom, wiping dirt from her bright, yellow gardening apron.

Emma moved closer, close enough to get a good whiff of the wet, earthy smell from the container. She closed one eye and squinted with the other. She did not see beautiful. She saw worms — ugly, fat, round, squirmy, slimy worms. She reached for her spade as an excuse to turn away. The spade’s iron blade was narrow and flat and a bit rusty. Emma felt braver around the worms with the spade in her hand.

Emma’s mom set the earthworm container aside and knelt down next to the edge of the garden. “Did you know,” she said, “earthworms are good gardeners, just like you and me.”

Since Emma was only pretending to like gardening, she didn’t say anything. She was absolutely positive she had nothing in common with these dirt-loving, creepy-crawly creatures. Emma sensed her mom was waiting for her to say something.

“How are earthworms like gardeners?” Emma asked. Honestly, she didn’t care about the answer but Emma did care about her mom’s feelings.

Emma’s mom smiled. “Earthworms till soil. Earthworms make tunnels underground.”

“How does that help the garden?” asked Emma.

“Tunnels allow air to flow to the plants’ roots. Earthworm tunnels can hold water, too,” her mom said.

Emma imagined a superhighway of tunnels underground, like the ant farm she saw once. “Wow,” she said. “I never thought about what work goes on underground.”

“When earthworms are making tunnels, they eat dirt. The excrement that comes out from worms conditions the soil.”

“Yuck, worm poop!” Emma said but she picked up the container to look closer. “Gross and kind of cool at the same time.”

“I think you will learn to be a very good gardener,” said her mom, “just like I learned from my mother and she learned from hers. You catch on fast.”

Emma liked the compliment. She didn’t exactly like earthworms now, but she felt a certain respect for them. To her surprise, she was also becoming more interested in gardening.

“What are we planting today?”

“There is a new moon tonight,” her mom said, “so today we plant lettuce.”

Emma looked confused. “What does the moon have to do with gardening?”

“It’s a custom, as old as dirt,” said her mom, grinning with her joke. “Gardeners, like my mother and my grandmother, and all those before her, have been studying the moon for a very long time. New moon is a good time for above ground plants like lettuce. Lunar gravity pulls water up. Seeds get full of water and burst to start their growing.”

“Is new moon the same as full moon?” asked Emma.

“No, my dear. New moon is the one you can’t see. The side facing earth is not lit up by the sun.”

Emma thought her mom was very smart. She wondered, could she ever learn all these secrets, the same way her mom had learned from Emma’s grandmother, and her great-grandmother before that?

“Oh, Mom,” said Emma, “sometimes I feel like such a silly monkey. I never guessed a gardener had to be so smart about things like worms and moons. What about the sun?”

Emma’s mom smiled. “We will work together — the sun, the moon, the worm, you and me — the old lady and the monkey.”

Emma pushed the tip of her spade into the ground and then hugged her mom. “You are not an old lady,” she said.

“And you are not a monkey,” said her mom.

“Let’s dig in,” they said together and laughed.

Special thanks to Bo Kim for this week’s illustration. To see more of her work, visit bokim.com.

Sunday May 9 is Mother’s Day.