Next life phase for us has arrived.  One of our birds has returned to the nest.  The youngest bird has decided to, well, not decide.  And in that indecision, the feathers of the home nest are the only ones he can afford to sleep in for the time being.  So, yesterday, we joined him in moving his belongings from his college apartment back to our empty nest basement.  There he will set up shop and begin the process of figuring out his next steps.

 

Understand he doesn’t want to be here.

Also understand, we dearly love him, and because of that love we are hopeful that he will find his way and be able to fly once again.  Not for our comfort – but for his success. We desire for him to be autonomous.

In the meantime, we will re-evaluate our parenting influence in his life, hope to be open to his ideas, and encourage him to discover what it is that makes him …well, him.

Parenting is kind of like gardening.  

In both, we carefully

• chose the soil (a spouse)
• plant the seed (figure that out yourself)
• water and pull weeds (boundaries in their lives)
• and then harvest the fruit or flower (send off to bloom on their own)

Sometimes we see the bounty of our labor immediately and sometimes we do not.  Sometimes, we wait with anticipation to see exactly what we will get from our planting and weeding and it seems that the flower just takes it own sweet time to bloom.  And sometimes, we plant and watch and see what seems to be nothing taking place.

But things are not always as they seem.

One day my DH texted me to tell me that he was at home with a bunch of naked ladies.  WHAT??? Wouldn’t you be shocked to hear your husband say this?  Me too!!  I texted him immediately asking just what in the world he was talking about.  And in his fashion (or lack of texting etiquette) he took his sweet old time in answering me.

When he did answer me, I could hear the chuckle in his voice, the one that says “gotcha” just like he does every time.  He said that these “naked ladies” just appeared in our front yard and he was very surprised to see them.  It was then that I realized he was referring to …. yes all you flower gardeners know what I am going to say … he was referring to the Belladonna Lilies, commonly referred to as “Naked Ladies”, that had suddenly appeared in our flower beds.  Sigh…… he laughed for several days about that one.  And he uses the same joke now each summer….and I have to think twice!

Then there is my jasmine plant.

Three years ago, I had one Mother’s Day request – I would like a jasmine plant.  My family obliged.  I have kept that plant inside for the winter and spring and moved it to the outside for summer and fall.  I have watered it, experienced lots of new growth on it and waited patiently for the fragrant blooms to appear.  For three years… nothing happened. Nothing.  I was so disappointed.  But I kept watering and waiting.

This June – low and behold- blooms.  Not a ton, but blooms.  I was ecstatic!  And they smelled heavenly.  I moved that precious plant into my house so I could enjoy every last one of those blooms until the last one dried up and fell off.  Today, I moved it back outside to enjoy the sun and warmth of summer as she builds up her ability to bloom next year.

Let me draw this analogy for you….

The lily is a bulb and  is put in the ground in the fall. In late summer they suddenly spring up overnight.  They surprise you with their bloom, their long “naked” stalk, sticking up over other green foliage that is beginning to wither and turn brown in the summer heat.  These babes love the heat, and they wait to dazzle us with their beauty until after so many other colorful flowers have wilted away.  They surprise us because we were so busy planting and watering and weeding and we see nothing from this bulb even sort of growing.  But boom, overnight, they seem to get the message and jump up and put out this beautiful flower.

The jasmine, on the other hand, just needed time to grow, to build its strength, to become mature enough as a plant to bloom.  My disappointment each spring/summer with no blooms did nothing to hurry the blooming process along.  When it was ready, it bloomed. And when it did – each little bloom was fragrant and so appreciated.

So it is with raising children – plant, water and weed.

There are some plants (children)  that show progress all along, you know that they are growing. You know that they will produce.  Other plants (children), we can’t always see just what is going on under the soil. But we weed and water anyway.  We continue to wait for just the right time for that plant to bloom.  We continue to wait for the sweet fragrance of success, for that stalk to jump out of the ground with a surprise.

Our naked ladies are starting to shoot up, my jasmine has bloomed. I know that this bird, that I love beyond myself, who is incredibly smart and talented, will also feather his own nest – we just need to keep weeding and watering.

 

 

 

If you have any other gardening advice for us, please pass it along.