Over the past several months, I've written about my mom more than I ever expected I would.
Part of that is simple: I'm still learning how to live in a world without her. Grief isn't something you finish. It changes shape over time, and lately mine has looked a lot like reflection.
The truth is, we were estranged for much of the last three years of her life. We didn't get the chance to rebuild what had been broken before she died, and that's something I'll probably carry for the rest of my life. There are conversations we'll never have, apologies we'll never exchange, and questions that will never be answered.
For a long time after she died, those were the parts I couldn't stop thinking about.
Relationships are complicated, and ours certainly was. She wasn't perfect. Neither was I. There were things she did that hurt me deeply, and there were things I wish I'd handled differently. Both of those things can be true at the same time.
But healing has a funny way of changing your perspective.
I've realized I don't have to carry every part of our relationship with me forever. I can acknowledge the hurt without letting it define the whole story. I can leave behind the things that no longer serve me while choosing to hold tightly to the gifts she gave me.
This isn't an essay about pretending my mom was perfect.
It's an essay about recognizing that imperfect people can still leave us extraordinary gifts.
Maybe that's part of healing too.
I've been thinking a lot lately about where my curiosity comes from.
I always knew I came from intelligent parents. That part never surprised me. But intelligence isn't the thing that shaped my life. Curiosity did. It has taken me forty-four years to realize those aren't the same thing.
Looking back, there was nothing we ever did with my mom that wasn't educational. Not because she sat us down with textbooks or turned everything into a formal lesson. She simply had a way of moving through the world that made curiosity contagious. Everything had another layer worth exploring, and she seemed determined to show us how to find it.
The kitchen wasn't where she taught me recipes. In fact, I don't remember learning many recipes at all. What I remember learning was white sauce. Equal parts fat and flour. Cook it just long enough to get rid of the raw flour taste. That was the lesson. From there she'd show me how one simple foundation could become dozens of completely different meals. Add sausage and you've got biscuits and gravy. Start with onions and mushrooms and you're headed toward stroganoff. Add garlic and milk and you're building a béchamel.
She wasn't teaching me dinner. She was teaching me the building blocks so I wouldn't need recipes. Once I understood those building blocks, she stepped back. She didn't stand over my shoulder correcting every mistake. She let me burn things. She let me overseason things. She let me figure out why something didn't work and then try again. She trusted me to learn. I didn't appreciate how extraordinary that was until I was an adult.
The fabric store wasn't shopping. It was another classroom. We'd spend what felt like hours flipping through pattern books. Not because we were looking for something to make that weekend, but because every page was another lesson. She'd point out the differences in the cut of a garment, explain why one neckline changed the entire feel of a dress, teach me the names of different waistlines and hems, why certain sleeves belonged to particular periods of history, and how the choice of fabric completely changed the way a pattern behaved. I wasn't just learning to sew. I was learning how things were constructed.
History was exactly the same. It wasn't dates. It was people. It was architecture, religion, politics, literature, music, fashion, food, and daily life. History was her favorite subject, and because she studied historical costuming, she didn't just know what people wore during a certain period—she could make it. History wasn't something that happened somewhere else. It became something tangible. Every subject I learned in school seemed to have a place in our conversations. Science. Literature. Art. Geography. Biology. She could explain the ins and outs of almost all of it.
Except math.
Neither of us ever really conquered that one.
Literature was never just reading either.
I'd come home from school with a Shakespeare assignment, and before long we'd be talking about far more than the play itself. My mom had a way of pulling apart language until you understood where it came from, what people would have meant when it was written, and why a modern interpretation sometimes missed the point.
One of my favorite stories was one from her own high school English class. They were reading Shakespeare when the phrase "vent his spleen" came up. Her teacher told the class it meant someone needed to go relieve themselves.
My mom respectfully raised her hand and explained that wasn't what the phrase meant.
She got in trouble for correcting her teacher.
Years later, when she told me that story, she explained why she'd spoken up. She taught me about the four humours and how people once believed the spleen was associated with anger and temperament. To "vent your spleen" wasn't about going to the bathroom at all. It meant giving voice to your anger.
What started as a Shakespeare lesson became a conversation about medieval medicine, history, language, and the evolution of English.
Looking back, that's exactly how my mom taught everything. She never stopped at the first answer. She always wanted to know what was underneath it.
Then there was music. This one might be the lesson I appreciate the most now.
My mom believed music deserved your full attention. We spent countless hours listening to classical music together, and she taught me music appreciation the same way she taught everything else—with curiosity. She'd ask if I could hear the oboe, then the cello, then the French horns. She taught me to recognize the sound of individual instruments instead of hearing the orchestra as one big wall of sound. When we listened to choral music, she'd help me pick out the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass parts until I could hear each voice weaving its own line through the piece.
Music stopped being something I listened to.
It became something I understood.
My mom sang in choir as a teenager and even performed at the National Cathedral. She continued singing for the rest of her life. If she was quilting, she was singing. If she was working around the house, she was singing. Some of my favorite memories are sitting in the audience watching her perform Handel's Messiah with the local oratorio society.
She even named me Carol.
Looking back, I don't think that was an accident. She gave me a musical name, and she filled my life with music from the very beginning. I sang in choir, played in the school orchestra, and eventually picked up the oboe in band because following her example felt as natural as breathing. Music wasn't something she encouraged me to try. It was something she quietly showed me was worth loving.
I don't think I appreciated those moments as much as I should have at the time. Looking back now, I realize I wasn't just listening to beautiful music. I was watching someone who truly loved what she was doing.
I think about those afternoons more often than you'd expect when I'm formulating. A tea isn't just one herb. A balm isn't just one oil. Every ingredient has its own voice. Some carry the melody. Others provide harmony. Some quietly support everything else without ever demanding attention. A good formula, like a good choir or orchestra, isn't about one part standing above the rest. It's about every part knowing exactly what it contributes to the whole.
Nature worked the same way. We didn't go for walks. We went bird watching. We identified trees. We learned wildflowers. We stopped to ask why one plant grew in one place and another somewhere else. We noticed. That was probably the lesson more than anything else. Notice. Pay attention. Ask another question. Never stop at the surface.
It has taken me forty-four years to realize these weren't separate lessons. Cooking wasn't really about cooking. Sewing wasn't really about sewing. History wasn't really about history. Literature wasn't really about literature. Music wasn't really about music. Nature wasn't really about nature. My mom wasn't trying to make me good at all of those things. She was teaching me how to approach learning itself.
She taught me that there is almost always another layer beneath the surface if you're willing to look for it.
I think that's why I have such a hard time doing anything halfway. When I become interested in a plant, I don't just want to know what it's traditionally used for. I want to know who first wrote about it, what cultures treasured it, what myths surround it, whether modern research agrees with those traditions, how it grows, what pollinates it, how it tastes, how it smells, and what it still has to teach. I don't know how to love something halfway. I never learned how.
For a long time after my mom died, I found myself wondering what parts of her I would carry forward. Would it be the recipes? The family traditions? The stories? Those things matter, but they aren't the greatest gift she left me.
The greatest gift she ever gave me was curiosity.
Not the kind that wants quick answers. The kind that asks another question. The kind that isn't satisfied with knowing that something works, but needs to understand why it works. The kind that keeps peeling back layers because there's always another one underneath.
I spent a long time thinking Green Magick Apothecary was built on everything I'd learned over the years. Now I think it was built on something much older. It was built on the way I was taught to see the world.
The older I get, the more I realize Green Magick Apothecary didn't begin when I planted my first medicinal herb or poured my first balm. It began decades earlier, with a little girl whose mother quietly refused to let the world become ordinary. Every walk was a lesson. Every song had another layer. Every recipe was really a lesson in technique. Every pattern book was a lesson in design. Every question deserved another question.
I spent a long time trying to figure out why I am the way I am. Why I always have to know the history, the folklore, the chemistry, the culture, the craft—not just the answer.
I think I finally know.
I didn't inherit my mother's hobbies.
I inherited her curiosity.
When I look around at my garden, my bookshelves, my workshop, my kitchen, and this little apothecary I've built, I don't just see the things I've learned.
I see the way I learned to learn.
And maybe that was always the real inheritance.
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