This weekend, I planted pansies and lavender and other flowers into pots for the exterior of our house. Spring has finally sprung! It was the first year that my daughter was actively engaged in doing it with me. I showed her how to put soil in, how to gently take flowers out of the containers and place them into new pots, how to carefully stabilize them inside the pots with some additional soil padded on and around them. I taught her how to water the plants with the new yellow duck watering can she had picked out.

She loved the whole thing, start to finish, and repeatedly said that she had loved doing it together with me. I half-expected her to ask me where I had learned to do these gardening things, but she didn’t. That was just as well. Because when we were back inside cleaning up, it occurred to me that I learned all this from my mother, and was now passing on that knowledge as a mother myself.

She loved it. And I enjoyed doing it with her too.

But I hated it.

*

I love coffee. I drink it every morning religiously. I’m picky about the kinds of coffee I like, too. I prefer a darker, richer roast. If it’s too light, it’s unpalatable for me. In that way, I’m rather like my mother and ex-stepfather who used to get a specific brand and brew of dark roast coffee. They would drink coffee all day long so they used to buy it in bulk. In all my (often successful) efforts to block out memories of them, somehow, I clearly remember their coffee preference.

These days, I’m usually the only one in my house drinking coffee consistently, so brewing a full pot every day goes to waste. My husband and I got a single-cup coffee maker as a wedding gift, and I’ve made great use of that over the years. But it’s hard to find coffee I like! I’ve tried a bunch and finally settled on one regionally available brand of dark roast as “good enough”, but I still think there may be better options out there.

Recently I saw on the shelf at the grocery store that they make k-cups of the precise type of coffee my mother and ex-stepfather used to brew, which I also would drink with them as a young adult. So I happen to know it’s good.

I can’t bring myself to buy it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

*

When you come from trauma, every little thing is big. Things like planting flowers and drinking coffee should be straightforward, but to the traumatized mind, they’re not. I’m beginning to wonder whether they ever will be, if it ever does get simpler. I’m inclined to think not. There’s a trigger and a pain and a lurch in the stomach for even the smallest of moments we experience. I can think of countless other examples, if I let myself. For people who’ve been lucky enough to lead enriching lives free of deep trauma, like my husband, flowers and dirt are just flowers and dirt. Coffee is just coffee. For people like me, they’re tiny grenades laying in wait for life to come along and pull the pins.

Planting flowers is a generational learning experience I never wanted to engage in. A really good cup of coffee at home remains an elusive dream.

Every little thing is big.