Once, in Greek myth, virgins were known to fall in wells, and these places marked portals to the underworld. Even Demeter, when she lost her daughter Persephone to the dark god, grieved and waited beside just such a virgin well,
in deadened silence, until a guide finally came with a lamp to illuminate her path.

My mother is both the mother of the grain, waiting for the secret; and the maiden daughter, falling in the well. Somewhere between these two figures is her old age.