In my father's garden

the long version

For years Kim Chernin thought her activist mother was her role model. She grew up in a household where her mother, a stormy revolutionary, organized meetings and debated politics. She was, she thought, her mother's daughter. Now, decades later, the author, a California psychoanalyst, finds that it is her father's gentle manner that has profoundly influenced her. While her mother taught her that she could change the world through bold action, in large and important ways, her father sought to make things happen in small ways. Now Chernin finds herself drawn to recollections of her father quietly working in his garden, which was, for her, she now realizes, a sanctuary and a school. Through three personal stories, Chernin, author of In My Mothers House, reflects on her own spiritual impulses. Whether she is comforting a dying woman or seeking wisdom from a Hindu holy woman, she keeps returning to the image of her father in his garden. That image helps awaken Chernin to a spiritual awareness and a realization that the world can be changed through gentle, caring deeds on a small scale - as small (and as large) as her father's garden.