— “My mom is living her life all wrong. I really want to help her…”
— “Help her how, exactly?”
— “Teach her how to live the right way.”
— “And you?”
— “What about me?”
— “Are you living the right way?”
— “Why are we talking about me? I’m talking about my mom!”
That’s how this story began—an ordinary one, yet deeply revealing.
Sitting across from me was a young, beautiful woman in a bright dress, wrists full of shiny bracelets. Confident. Modern. Put together.
Her mother, she said, lived “the wrong way.” Because despite having an apartment and even a voucher for a wellness resort, she stubbornly refused to relax. Instead, she wanted her garden, her vegetable beds, her potatoes.
“I’ve told her a hundred times—just buy the potatoes, I’ll pay!” the daughter complained. “All she and her friends talk about are their grandkids.”
“And what do you think they should be talking about?” I asked.
“Spiritual growth,” she said without hesitation.
“And you?” I smiled.
“Me again?” she looked confused. “I have a degree in journalism. I work. I live an active life.”
It turned out her mother never had a higher education. She raised her daughter alone, without a husband, living together with the grandmother.
“How was life back then?” I asked.
“Poor,” she admitted. “I was embarrassed by my mom. Summers meant nothing but the garden and potatoes. We picked berries and sold them, and other kids made fun of me—‘your mom sells berries.’ I didn’t see the ocean until tenth grade.”
“And who paid for your education?” I asked quietly.
“Who weeded those ‘stupid potatoes’ so you’d have food to eat?
Who sold those berries so you could have clothes and schoolbooks?”
Your childhood was the 1990s—a time when people survived thanks to their gardens, not thanks to ‘spiritual development.’
She went silent.
Because she understood: everything she has today grew out of those garden beds.
“But you’re only talking about material things,” she objected softly. “There’s also spirituality, trust, love…”
“It’s easy to talk about spirituality when your fridge is full,” I replied.
“It’s much harder when it’s empty. Your mother gave you everything she could. And it worked—you now have choices. How to live. What to believe in. And now—it’s your turn.”
One of my professors once said: “Parents are always wrong. But thanks to them, you have the chance to live differently.”
Our parents didn’t have glossy lives. They washed clothes by hand, stood in endless lines, worked without rest.
But because of them, we can read books, take vacations, and imagine a different future.
They lived “the wrong way” only by our standards.
Our “right” lives grew out of their gardens, their cold apartments, their beets and berries sold so we could have a chance at something more.
And there—between garden rows and old friends—they learned the most important thing of all: to find joy in simple things, and gratitude in every single day.
Now our task is to tend our own garden: to respect what was done for us, and to learn how to say thank you.
That’s where real maturity begins — when you stop judging your parents and finally see them as people who simply did the best they could.