Nurturing Life Without Water.

The minute I stepped out of the truck into La Jaguita, a rural town in the Dominican Republic, I noticed a huddled group of young mothers holding their babies. I took a portrait of each of them, but Clarissa stood out to me. 

It was the way she covered her squishy baby in kisses. They looked like they could just melt into each other, these two lives conjoined by unconditional love. 

She seemed not the least bit stressed by motherhood, no, she was thriving, even glowing. 

I asked her how she makes it look so easy and she said, “Being a good mother is about caring for something else besides yourself, committing to being responsible every day for this life. It gives you so much purpose.” She compared it to caring for the lush garden she cultivated in her backyard. Taking me on a tour, she gently touched each individual plant, identifying them for me. Winding vines of chinola, bushy gandules, sprawling auyama. I thought of my dying cactus back home. It was clear to me, Clarissa had the natural ability to care for things. 

While holding baby Moises, she pulled out a stem of sugar cane for me. She does everything while holding him.

When I asked her about how she got water for her family and her plants, she explained that she walks multiple times a day down to the river to collect water, with the baby on her hip. 

She said, “You need water to care for your family. Once I have a faucet at home, I’ll be an even better mother.”

The connection became clear to me, between mothers and water. From mothers, new life enters the world, and like good gardeners, they tend and nurture to cultivate a human that will bear good fruit. But without water, there is no life. There’s no garden. Water is a gift of nature, the true origin of all life. We call her Mother Earth, don’t we?