Seeds

“Oh, my goodness!” Ethel Schmidt said, as the tour began. “Was your daughter obsessed with gardening at a young age?” Angie stifled a sigh and kept her poker face tight. “Just smile and nod,” she told herself. “Smile and nod some more.” Danielle was barely two when Angie had caught her with pockets of seeds, sorting them carefully and asking for sandwich bags. “Honey, we can get some pretty flower seeds; you don’t have to grow a whole forest!” Danielle had ignored her with a shrug. “Maybe not right now, Mommy,” she’d mumbled (making a face), “but we should get ready to remake the Earth.” It had chilled her then and it chilled her now. Angie led Ethel and the others into the Marine Seeds Room and they were amazed. Outside of the enclosure, the Red Planet just kept doing its red, dusty thing. “You must be so proud,” someone said, and she was - proud and heartbroken and angry as hell that Danielle had been on the one transport that didn’t make it. “You always care about the wrong things, Mom,” she’d said at fifteen in the middle of an argument. “Why can’t you think Big Picture?!?” “Because it pales in comparison to you, little one,” Angie told her daughter silently, “and it always will.”