The First Ground
Day 72b — in honor of my mother
My mother is in a hospital, more than six thousand kilometres from here.
She knows what is coming. We — her children — know it too. Each of us is preparing in our own way. This is mine.
She was the first ground. Before any garden, before any path, before any of the words I now live by, there was a woman who carried — quietly, daily, never asking to be thanked.
She cooked for us. She cared for us. She was there with us — in the good times and in the bad. A husband to please and feed. Eight children to feed, and always food on the table. Like magic.
I understood only later what that magic cost.
What I know of holding, I learned by being held. She did not explain it. She did it, every ordinary day, until it looked like nothing at all.
It was everything.
Seventy-two days I have been writing about what the ground does — that it carries, that it feeds, that it asks nothing back. The last fourteen days I have been sleeping directly on it. Der Boden trägt.
She was living it before I could walk.
This post is for her.
My thoughts, my prayers are with her.
Seven places were on the table. The number was never the question. Now I am listening, the direction has been read. I am here to serve, with. The needs of the people who have been close to me all these years belong in this too.
Day 72b — Phase 11 — Thought — Gallbladder — Onyx — Ubuntu
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast
© 2025–2026 Michel Garand | A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan | CC BY-SA 4.0
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