Recently, I saw true love. Love intertwined with my own personal history, sheltered in a place rich with meaning. 

This love was not romantic, but held longevity and fierce loyalty.

A mother and a daughter, Jennifer and Nancy, are living together on their land in California. A place I know intimately, inhabited by two humans I adore. Women tenderly trading love back and forth like cherished heirloom jewelry.

We are not blood-related, but I have known Nancy and Jennifer since I was seven. Nancy and her husband Bob were my parents’ closest friends. Over the years, we have spent countless days together, shared many holidays, and taken family trips. Nancy was like a second mother to me, especially during my formative years. Children need people who believe in them, and Nancy believed in me. She recognized my hidden academic potential. She drew out my true creative self, and gently prodded me when I got too serious or withdrawn. 

Recently, her daughter Jennifer shared with me that Nancy was having some health difficulties. If I were going to visit, this was the time. Jumping on a plane and flying across the country, I imagined my visit. I would spend time helping around the house, explore the garden and sit with Nancy.

What I did not expect was to be so moved by the depth of love and devotion between two people. Viewing my own history through fresh eyes, I gained a deeper appreciation of the role that beloved elders have played in my life. 

In my 5th grade year, I attended The Higham School, a private garden and arts school Nancy and her husband Bob ran out of their Santa Rosa home, the same home she remains in today. The school was a creative haven for children who gathered every morning to sing songs from The American Songbook and beyond. We learned (alongside reading and writing), pottery, art, puppetry, and mask making by a variety of Sonoma County artists.

We took field trips to the redwoods and the Pacific Coast and made apple cider in an old-fashioned press. Bob decreed that you would not be excused from lunch unless you had eaten the apple you picked off a tree that morning, down to the core. Only the stem and bitter seeds in their casings should remain. In my mind, Bob still looks over my shoulder when I bite into an apple, ensuring nothing goes to waste.  

Memories of The Higham Family School can still be found in Nancy’s house today. Clay faces created by students peer out from a wall and Nancy’s library still holds the Beverly Cleary and Shel Silverstein books I once savored. The ancient apple press sits unused in the garage. 

Through the years, Nancy’s sharp educator’s mind (she’s a UC Berkeley graduate), sense of humor, and practical nature have provided a steady stream of wisdom and unfussy guidance to me and many other young people. She still participates in a book group with women she has known since college (they call themselves the “Bookies”). Now that I am a teacher (a profession I fell into willingly but unexpectedly), I often find myself thinking “What would Nancy and Bob do?” 

It wasn’t just in my childhood that Nancy played an important role. When I was a young professional in San Francisco, Nancy often hosted my fiancé and me for Easter and Thanksgiving. Later, knowing that I was an eight-month pregnant soon- to-be mother missing her own mother, Nancy flew to Indiana and designed and implemented an entire landscaping and garden project for my now husband and myself. My two children only met Nancy and Bob a few times, but loved them and and didn’t want to let go.

The last few years have been difficult for Nancy and Jennifer. Nancy’s beloved husband (and Jennifer’s father), Bob, passed away, joining their son who had died far too young. Bob’s absence leaves a gaping and very quiet hole in the house, and Nancy misses Bob terribly. Health issues have piled on top of both ladies like the manure heap in the back corner of the garden. 

Still, I know no other human who is more fiercely connected to and defined by her home, garden, and surrounding land than Nancy is, and Jennifer has given Nancy the gift of staying in her home, of “aging in place” with exquisite 24-hour caregiving. And even though two terrifyingly destructive fires in recent years have burned many surrounding houses to the ground, Nancy’s still stands. Despite exhaustion and an unknown future, so do mother and daughter. 

Nancy and Jennifer have learned to cultivate small joys – enjoying fresh and preserved food from the garden, arranging flowers from the beds outside, savoring ice cream and fresh bread from a local bakery, watching home improvement shows, reading out loud, and tending to their pet (the only remaining chicken from the once robust flock in the garden), an 11-year-old miracle chicken named Sweet Pea who prefers her granola handfed. This year, Nancy and Jen decided that they enjoyed the lights of the Christmas tree so much it would stay up into February.

True love can be hard to find in our world today. We wonder whether love is genuine, if there is an agenda, and if it will disappear tomorrow. Spending those days in Nancy’s house, sitting quietly and holding her hand, watching Jennifer’s patient caregiving, I was shown how Nancy’s love and guidance have impacted my life. 

I saw that no health challenge, no passing of time, no fire or painful loss can cancel the knowledge and devotion shared by family, or family of choice. 

Inside a home that housed a school, the place that helped shape so many young hearts and minds, a woman shares her final chapter with her daughter. What I experienced during my four-day visit refreshed my belief in the power of presence and devotion. 

May we all know such an enduring impact, such true love.