My mother used meth most of my life. She stole and lied and cheated and left. She spent most of my childhood in prison, and much of my young adulthood too. She missed my college graduation. Missed the first day of my dream job. Missed so many versions of me becoming myself.

Next month I turn 40 and my mother is officially drug free. No meth. No oxy. Nothing.

And this morning she showed up at my house with new gardening shears. I didn’t know what to do with that. With her, standing there. With the wanting to let her in and the part of me that has been waiting my whole life to be disappointed again.

My flowerbeds have gotten away from me lately, swallowed up by weeds and thorny blackberry bushes in the chaos and magic and exhaustion of motherhood.

She looked at the bushes and said, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Then she knelt down in the dirt at 63 years old and spent hours cutting and pulling and digging the thorns out by the root. She did it all without asking. Just showing up. Just loving me in the ways she knows how now.

And that’s not nothing.