"I beg your pardon,
I never promised you a rose garden."
That's how one of my favorite country songs goes.
When Mothers Day comes around each year, these lyrics run through my head. In some ways, having children is like planting a garden. Lots of work for magical results; long hours of back-breaking work; some failures and many, many successes; the failures are not really failures, but ill-chosen choices -- like the decision to plant root vegetables in stony soil -- when all along the climate and soil conditions are best suited for above-ground crops. Forced cultivation never works. The gardener does not really have full authority over the crop -- full authority ceases after planting -- and after that, when the crop takes on a life of its own, vining and spreading and needful -- that's when the real work begins.
Where this extended metaphor ends is at the point when children become adults. Nothing in the gardening process is equivalent to the letting-go phase of parenting.
What prompted this line of thought -- the rose garden analogy -- is a gift I received this year from my middle son this year on Mothers Day. A potted Gerbera plant for my garden -- and a bottle of bat guano and live earthworm extrusions to fertilize my garden. That guy really knows my heart. Bat guano. And Earthworm extrusions.
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