The Damned Hydrangea...

I had an argument with a hydrangea tonight.

The hydrangea won.

I just felt that I had reached my limit, I guess. The damn thing takes longer showers than I do. I mean, when I remember to water it. And yet, every day, I arrive home or come outside to see it there, looking pathetic, dried up, dead, as if nobody is even TRYING to take care of it.

Tonight was the last straw. I watered it yesterday. (I think… didn’t I?) Yes. I watered it yesterday. God watered it today, in the form of a well-timed rain shower that canceled my sweet daughter’s softball game. And yet, I walked out this evening to find it looking like death on a silver platter. Talk about ungrateful.

I couldn’t take it any more. I stood over it, frustration building as I surveyed its withered, downtrodden countenance.

Finally, I shouted at it. “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!?!”

The rest was mostly muttering. “For the love of God, what do you want from me? I planted you lovingly. I dug a hole of the dimensions prescribed on your tag from the landscape nursery. I placed Scott’s Miracle Gro garden soil in the hole first. Then I watered the hole, in preparation for your arrival. Next, I gently placed you in the hole, then filled in around you with the soil I had removed to make the hole. I topped that off with more garden soil from Scott’s. Aren’t they supposed to be the best? I thought I picked the best soil for you. I tamped the soil around you, then placed mulch atop the soil. Dang, but you looked handsome just then. Beautiful, green stems stretching out to display pretty little blue/purple flowers. So striking, against the backdrop of the black mulch. I watered some more, just for good measure… So, what happened to us since then? It’s been a tug-o-war. A power struggle of epic proportions. You shrink up and look pathetic, I water feverishly, you perk up and forgive whatever sins I’ve committed as a semi-attentive gardener. Then we do it all again. Shrink. Panic. Water. Forgiveness…. What happened to our relationship that seemed so promising? ….”

The hydrangea simply mocks me. It won’t even rise to meet me eye-to-eye, instead choosing to cast its head downward, ignoring my obvious pain. I swear to you, if it’s looking healthy again tomorrow when I pull out of the garage to go to work, I will simply drive on by. I refuse to cheer, refuse to get emotionally involved. Who needs this in her life? The manipulation, the game-playing… I know that even if I share victory with the plant in the morning, it will be playing its same old game by evening. I will pull into the driveway to face the agony of defeat once more.

My eyes slide to the left, where my neighbor’s hydrangea stands, mocking me. HUGE, beautiful blooms on bright, cheerful green stems with lush green leaves to accent the juicy success of it all. I love my neighbors, but I curse the plant anyway. Damn show-off. It’s probably giving my little hydrangea a complex. It probably shouts derisive comments while I’m away, causing my plant to shrink back with self-conscious awareness of all that it’s NOT. After all, say what you will, but size DOES matter, doesn’t it?

I went to see my mother, 20 minutes away. More mocking, more derision. Her hydrangea looks FINE, thank you very much. It looks happy, and healthy. It looks like it could teach a freakin’ CLASS on how to be a happy, healthy hydrangea, if only you’re a hydrangea who is lucky enough to live in the garden of someone who is not completely inept, someone who knows what she is doing, who can love you, nurture you, affirm you enough to rise toward the heavens with full, gorgeous blooms that shout to the world that you are living your dream, being all you can be in the world of hydrangea self-actualization.

I frown. I curse. I curse some more. I pull out of my mom’s driveway, wondering why God has put me on this earth to fail at everything I ever try. I realize that’s really a dramatic extrapolization of a challenge with a garden plant. I deride myself for that. Then it hits me.

My gardening failures make me feel like I suck at nurturing. They confirm the deep-seated shame I feel about my failures in the parenting arena. Because after all, gardening is rather like parenting, isn’t it? If you do it right, your beds are beautiful, vibrant, ridiculous reflections of your wisdom, and skill, and perfection. Aren’t they? And isn’t parenting the same way?

If you REALLY did it right, you get to go on Facebook and brag about your kid who just gave the Valedictorian speech at the high school graduation. You get to be really, really thankful for all the scholarships and grants your kid received, based on his or her success thus far. You get to ask for prayer as your college graduate moves on to her career in molecular engineering, after graduating summa cum laude from Harvard or Princeton or whatever. That’s the SAME THING as having a hydrangea that displays to the world that it is so freakin’ happy to be planted in the soil in which it’s planted… isn’t it? It’s colorful, and healthy, and vibrant, because, good gracious almighty, it was lucky enough to be planted HERE, with an owner who is masterful at the whole feeding, watering, loving, nurturing thing.

I look at the hydrangea head-on, and memories flood my brain. Memories that make me want to die, because I failed so miserably. Memories of two sweet baby boys and a sweet baby girl that, for some reason I can’t fathom, God entrusted me with their care. One boy in particular, a boy who was and is so intelligent, so sensitive, that I might have ruined him. Or I might have been completely inconsequential. Both hurt.

I survey the failed hydrangea and relive one of the experiences of which I am most ashamed, among the hundreds of thousands or millions of experiences that make up my life. I am so ashamed of this moment… in which I, as an overwhelmed, unconscious mom, just trying to get through, maintain, SURVIVE… I pulled into the garage with my two sweet boys, two impressionable little guys who had pushed me to the limit that day.

One little guy in particular, who was so smart, so manipulative, so cold, it felt to me… I don’t even remember what action or event or behavior was the catalyst, I just remember that I was sad, and mad, and completely over my head with a kid who was, and is, probably smarter than even I…

I pulled the van into the garage and said to one of my baby boys, emphatically, without thinking, only feeling, “You do not have a good heart. You need to work on caring what other people feel, and what your effect on them is…”

My husband at the time, he was there, in the garage. And he was dumbfounded at the cruelty of what I had said. I remember experiencing him physically sucking in his breath, taking in the words I had hurled at our little boy. One of the only times in our shared lives, probably one of the only times in his own life, my ex-husband rose up with shock and indignation and the strength of his own convictions. He said, “That is WRONG. You do NOT say that to a little boy, that he does not have a good heart. He has a good heart. You don’t say that to a little boy.”

I was immediately ashamed. Ashamed doesn’t begin to describe the feeling, the crushing weight of failure. These were babies I had carried in my womb, for whom I had held my breath when walking behind buses or trucks in traffic, fearful that the exhaust would hurt these little lives forming inside of me. I had dreamed of being a mom. Dreamed of doing it RIGHT, nurturing them, building them up, empowering them to conquer the world.

And yet, here I was, a person who had hurled the ugly judgment at my own son, thoughtlessly saying, “You don’t have a good heart.” I went on to allow them to witness their mom completely out of control sometimes. When frustration would build up, they would see me, throwing things (an air compressor went sailing by this same baby boy’s head when I couldn’t get it to work, I couldn’t get an air mattress to inflate, which meant the family camping trip wouldn’t be picture-perfect after all, I hadn’t achieved perfection, again, in this desperate attempt to make our fracturing family okay) … they would see me spewing profanity, or making foul gestures (Mom, you just flipped me off! No, baby, I didn’t, I was flipping off in general, just into the air, it wasn’t directed at you)… and it wasn’t – directed at him – but kids immediately internalize all that they see and assume it happened because of some shortcoming of their own… It doesn’t matter how many hundreds or thousands of warm, wonderful memories we also gave them, when they were there for a mama’s meltdown, that’s something they don’t easily forget…

These moments stand out on the landscape of our common lives – their experiences as a child, mine as their mom – and make me wonder… Are these things the reason they weren’t the Valedictorian, or the star athlete, or the artistic genius? Did I shut them down, stop them dead in their tracks as they were on their way to stunning success?

I have two handsome, charming, smart and amazing 18-year-old boys. I am sincerely proud of who they are every single day, and thank God for the blessing of having them in my life. But they are normal, middle-of-the-pack, average boys. They will probably earn more money and have more fun than I have. Still, I worry that they were capable of more, and that the experience of being my sons kept them from the extraordinary, one-in-a-million achievements I dreamt for them.

And it’s because of that, I think, that I curse the damned hydrangea bush. I don’t need another reminder of all that I lack in the nurturing department. I don’t want to reflect on the failures I might have visited upon these sweet, impressionable babies. And most of all, I don’t want the anxiety of thinking that perhaps, I’ll screw it all up with my baby girl also… the one who has had to weather divorce at a tender age, the one who is already smart, and funny, and beautiful, and lippy… The one who is already showing signs of pulling away, standing her ground, fighting me tooth and nail over the mundane details of what I need and expect of her vs. what she thinks is unreasonable or not important.

I want the damned hydrangea bush to affirm me, to be a reflection of the fact that I’ve grown since the boys were young, that I can’t quite remember who that woman was, the one who was so tense, and anxious, and unhappy. I want the stupid, stupid plant to say, “You are forgiven. You are redeemed. You are better now, and closer to the woman God intended you to be. And by the way, your boys realize it too. And they forgive you. And God forgives you. And all is right with the world.”

I guess that’s a lot to ask of a garden plant.

Truth be told, I’ll probably jump out of the car and kiss the damn thing if it’s bright and perky and healthy-looking in the morning. Of all the things I've been in my life, I guess I've never been a quitter...

Ah, Spring...

Artists of every type and stripe have struggled for centuries to describe the emotional explosion of springtime without coming off as a pseudo-artistic dork.

It is the season of fresh, dew-drenched, flower-laden renewal, teasing our minds forward into daydreams of long, summer days and well-deserved vacations—but you can’t just go around saying that to people. They’ll have you committed.

Add to that the fact that my own springtimes are chock full of dates with incredible emotional meaning, and the whole thing may actually send you running to book an Alaskan cruise.

The date that’s been around the longest is the birthday of my beloved Grandmother King on May 22. She had a green thumb, an artistic exuberance and a dry wit that I didn’t appreciate nearly enough while she was with us, though I loved and enjoyed her fully from childhood through adulthood.

The newest spring milestone is, of course, the most meaningful: I gave birth to my twin baby boys on Mother’s Day weekend, 1994. In a two-minute flash, one became three: one cocky child who thought she knew everything was joined by two helpless infants who have raised her to adulthood, where she finally knows how little she knows. Funny how that happens.

In a few short weeks, they will be 18. We will have graduation, they will have a party, then they will drift into the next chapter with me still scribbling feverishly on this one – wishing I could pull them back, trap them in these pages just one more moment so I can get it just right. Add more wisdom, more values, more experience; erase the mistakes, the hurtful moments, the bewilderment and vulnerability and disappointment of realizing that the adults who are in charge of your world sometimes have no earthly idea what they’re doing.

You see, I am my mother’s daughter—she is an amazing seamstress. And yet, I remember rushing breathlessly out the door to more than one school dance with the uneasy feeling that if I looked down at my hemline, there she might be, keeping pace with us down the sidewalk, madly stitching and re-stitching this “one last part.”

Lucky for the boys (and their parents), the moment is here, the deadline has passed. No more stitching. They’ll have to move on into the rest of their story and make do with the unedited, raw truth of whatever we were able to give them. We’ll have to hope that enough of the good stuff stuck.

The boys were tumbling toward the twelfth May of their young lives when another pivotal event shifted our world.

We lost my mother-in-law, their grandma, on April 20, 2005. I am a better person for having known her, and I continue to be blessed by the memory of her. Best of all, God knew just how to carry her forward into our futures – in the sweet face of our Lizzie, born three years before her death, and bearing a striking resemblance to her beautiful “Grammaw-Grammaw.”

Julia Ann was unlike any woman I had ever met. Most ladies in this world are exceedingly self-critical—picking, fretting and muttering at each perceived bump, lump, wrinkle, blemish, stray hair and gray hair. We spend countless hours and endless energy wishing our flat places were round and our round places were flat; tanning and toning, working out and dieting, willing ourselves taller, thinner, shorter or prettier.

This tiny tower of strength was the “anti” all of that. Not purposefully so—I believe it just never occurred to her to be so self-involved. Nor did she fuss over the dust, muss, or possible shortcomings of the house where she made her home.

No, “Mom’s” focus was outside of herself and the “things” of her life. She was the unintentional hub of a very large circle of loved ones. She quietly, wisely observed; kept her counsel and held her tongue when it didn’t seem humanly possible; and spoke volumes in just a few words when she chose to speak on a subject. She was the singular expert on each of us; we all felt that she “got” us like no one else could. Truth was, she did.

I used to joke, and I still mostly believe, that she had a way of making each of her offspring feel that they were secretly her favorite. She did this without slighting or belittling the others in any way. She had a gift for making you feel big without making anyone else seem small.

Most of all, Julia Ann believed in and loved her God with every fiber of her being. She didn’t fret over it, she simply lived it. She didn’t seem to harbor the guilt and regret and shame that so many of us believe are the proud wounds of the “true” Christian. She was instead, a joyful, kind, giving and forgiving sort of Christian who lived by example and walked by faith.

In all the time I knew this woman, I never heard judgment cross her lips. “Mama Bear” defenses or awareness of evil might bring a dark look across her face on rare occasions; but more often, “Mom’s” face held a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, or a twinkle dancing in her eye.

You’re surely thinking that if all of this were true, she must have been darn near perfect, and you’re right. She was. I was nearly knocked physically to my knees, boo-hooin’ like a teething baby the other day, with the truth of how much I miss her, and the grief of knowing I have failed her in my broken marriage to her baby boy. I thought how disappointed she would be; how that dark look would cross her face at the thought of it all.

Then I remembered. It was just before she went home to be with her God, her daughter, and her lifelong love. She was busy on the threshold, preparing for the ultimate journey. I was busy stealing a single, blessed moment to ask her forgiveness for shortcomings unspoken, to express my love, and generally make it about me when it wasn’t about me at all.

I don’t even remember our words. As usual, there were more of mine than hers. I just remember that she comforted me. She patted my hand from her bed. She made me know I was forgiven, and understood, and loved.

As I thought of that pivotal moment, I looked up and noticed the strong, yet dainty pink flowers bursting forth on that tree I never remember the name of in my front yard. (She wouldn’t judge me for that, but she’d know what it is.)

Those abundant buds are strong and delicate, just like her. They’re a treat for the senses that reaffirms springtime, this fragrant interlude between winter and summer… forgiveness of the past, and promise of the future.

 Julia Ann’s memory.

Her grandsons’ beginnings.