Unhurried

I planted a peony bulb in the fall of 2020. It's the type of peony I used to cut out of magazines as a little girl and paste onto collages: butter-yellow, full, silky. As an adult, I'm not usually organized enough to consider bulbs, but I got my act together for this one.

Spring of 2021 it sprouted but did not flower. Spring of 2022 it sent up shoots and showed promising signs of developing several flowering stalks. Then, one early May afternoon, my son crushed the nascent plant while running through the yard. He saw my shocked face and started crying and apologizing. Because he was in a very fragile place, I knew that my reaction could send him into a spiral of self-flagellation or, if managed correctly, it could teach him to see the incident for what it was: a mistake and not a catastrophic, personal failing. Internally, I was extremely disappointed; peonies are one of my favorite flowers, and I put a lot of TLC into this little perrenial. But, peonies are resilient and that was the very trait I wanted to impart to my son. Somehow, we managed to make it through the next few moments without things going off the rails. I told some white lies (It's no big deal! Really! It'll bounce back!) and found something else in the yard to distract him. Now it is 2023, and the peony has returned. I'm hopeful. I'm also reminded that to foster life that is strong, resilient and beautiful, it takes years. C and my peony are thriving now.

Everything seems immediate and urgent with parenting: Bedtime! School attendance! Summer camp deadlines! Scraped knees and hurt feelings! Doctor's appointments! It's necessary to live in the present much of the time. But the individual moments are like tiny dots of paint that, over time, build a human life like a pointillist painting. Patience with the grind of the daily routine, trust in the hundreds of hours of therapy, coming back again and again to say I love you, and It's ok, dozens of times a day, repairing mistakes and parental fuckups, waking up every day to try again even if that means you only have the energy to send high-fructose pre-packaged snacks in their lunchbox.

Growing up, my dad loved to tell me, It's a marathon, not a sprint. Oh yeah? I'd think. Then I'll run the best, fastest god damn marathon you've ever seen. Just watch me. Clearly I missed the point, which resulted in some burnout. I'm learning that running a long race or building a meaningful life takes a lot of patience and practice. You need to stop to refuel, you need to listen to your body, and sometimes you need to abandon one goal to reach a more important one. My husband now tells me, Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good! The combination of those two adages makes a good framework for parenting. It allows for mistakes, pivoting, repair, and growth.