I gave my daughter a fig tree for Mother’s Day. I gave her a fig tree because, like olive trees, they are old, ancient, trailing the use of thousands of years. There is evidence that fig trees were the first plant species to be cultivated, even before grains. They have the weighty gravitas of time and use. They are found everywhere the climate is suitable and, in some cases, like here, where the weather is on the edge.

There are homes, particularly on the north side of the city of Syracuse, where each house had its fig tree, the owners carefully wrapping it against the winter cold or binging it inside to a less frigid area or, and I have seen this, bending the precious fig tree and burying it to be resurrected in the spring. My daughter will no doubt plant her tree in a large container that can be moved inside during the inclement weather. It’s a ritual that is most appropriate for her as the mother that she is. The care of the tree, though little, is crucial and it represents the soul of being a mother, a caring for, a must-do because of the outcome.

I hope she loves her tree as it grows over the years, its lovely, lobed leaves providing shade and its clusters of fruits the start of delicious sharing around the table with those she loves. I recommend an old recipe that calls for stuffing a fresh fig with gorgonzola cheese and wrapping the fig with bacon. The wrapped fig is then put in the oven at a high temperature until the bacon is cooked. Pierced with a pick of some sort, accompanied by a glass of Rioja or Sangiovese … that’s a good reason to have a fig tree.

I gave my daughter a fig tree hoping that, as it grows, she will share it with others. Fig trees are easily propagated and their many varieties are the result of cross breeding by fig fanciers throughout the world, yielding a wide variety of tastes.

I gave her a fig tree to share the experience of growth and harvest together with her husband and her two sons – my beloved grandsons, an earthy way of being family.

I gave Emily a fig tree because she will love it. It is the romance of ancient times, storied importance in the bible, elevated in literature and poetry, the reliability that comes from its patrimony, the joy of its fruitage. I gave her the fig tree to carry on the love of gardening from her great-grandmother, her grandmother and her mother.

And I gave Emily a fig tree because I remember a visit to what is claimed to be the house of Leonardo Da Vinci in Italy. The house was plain, small with only two rooms. It stood in a grove of olive trees that belonged to his mother. The trees were much older than Leonardo or his mother and continue to produce fruit today. Vinci, the town, has passed on the privilege of harvest to someone else. We were privileged to watch the current owner of the harvest gather the olives in nets that surrounded the trees. There is something about olive trees and fig trees that bind us to the earth, to those who went before and those who will follow.

A fig tree is like the eclipse or the northern lights. It is like spring after winter and the crisp feelings of autumn. It is beyond the technical age in which we live, an authenticity greater than the electric grid, an eternal capture of a universal truth. It’s one way of saying, “remember” the love of those who went before.