Meet “Bernadette,” my indoor Hibiscus that wildly thrived during our hot midwestern summer on my patio. She has a sister outdoors but we simply don’t have enough room to bring her in. My husband helped me choose which outdoor plant gets a chance to thrive indoors this winter based on two simple things: our indoor space availability (exactly ONE north-facing window) and our combined capacity to haul it in. You see, our big, beefy, son, Mario, moved to Colorado to begin his adult life one year ago today, leaving Mom and Dad behind to painstakingly manage the few “bulky projects” on our own on the rare occasions we both have the will and the strength.
I have many friends who are master gardeners. They talk to me about “cutting back” and “dividing” and “fertilizing” and “overwintering” green things as if I somehow share this common language and love for growing things with them. To be honest, I feel lucky beyond measure any time a plant like my blooming hibiscus comes along and decides (completely independently of anything I do) to grow alot and hang in there with me for more than one season. When this happens, my heart returns to a core memory of being a child in 4-H and growing a sunflower in a coffee can as a “summer project.” That was a wondrous thing of beauty and sheer delight, watching MY seed grow daily before my eyes and blossom into a very large, geniune sunflower. I wish I had a photo but I will never forget that unique feeling of love, accomplishment and satisfaction. That sunflower may have been the first thing in my young life (besides a barn kitten) I invested a part of myself in with the hope that would be enough to nurture and sustain it.
“The Little Prince” reminds me of the feeling this season of life – new empty nest, adult children (and new son in law), aging body, long term marriage – actually means: those relationships and saplings I have spent years “tending to” are significant, thriving and emanating love BECAUSE of the time I have spent “fertilizing” them. This is the proper measurement of a “life well lived.”
I’m grateful my hibiscus reminded me of this at this particular moment in time. It’s tempting at age 60, after a life of devotion to my home and family, to look at what is left – children living independently across the country – as “nothing” when the opposite is true: it reflects the result of me pouring all that I had and all that I was into the life that we lived for a brief time. I fertilized my family very well.
Not only that, I did it with a hidden disability that did not have a name until earlier this year – ADHD. What that means to an adult woman is very different than the stereotypical “hyperactive gradeschool boy who cannot sit still in class” we have learned about. I have survived the challenges of adult life, relationships, motherhood and employment with an underfunctioning prefrontal cortex (the executive function command center of the brain) and an overfunctioning amygdala (the “fight or flight”/hypervigilant, big emotional response part of the brain meant to protect us from predators). It’s been ALOT, a journey riddled with many misunderstood challenges and mishaps because girls with ADHD (myself included) learn to mask their differences by mimicking “normal” behavior and responses of neurotypical peers. It means I am tired from a lifetime of pretending to be “normal” and hiding the shame of that “big secret” daily. I hid in alcohol (which didn’t work much). I hid in plain sight to such a degree that even the people closest to me responded in utter dismay: “You can’t POSSIBLY have ADHD because you have been able to manage your life so well.” On the surface!
This year, I also became a huge fan of amaryllis bulbs that thrive inside a wax casing – all they need is sunlight (and love, I would argue) to grow. I gave several away as gifts and made sure we had one in the kitchen for Christmas and Easter. Then by summer I became enamored with my patio hibiscus. As this year of massive transitions draws to a close, I recognize now the significance of these small living things I have nurtured during a time I believed I was losing so much. I woke up many mornings thinking of the word “Drifting” – both captivating and horrifying, for it seemed to me I could spend the next 30 years doing just that. And I need a new purpose.
I spent alot of time with an old friend early this fall in her community garden, helping her tend to the beautiful summer squash, tomatoes and eggplants she had been tending all summer. The reconnection with my friend after first meeting her when I was just 23 – now, I am 60 and she is 79- has been reviving and comforting to me in ways I haven’t been able to articulate. In late August, right after my daughter’s wedding, together we celebrated a mutual friend’s 100th birthday. Imagine the fertilizer from life our friend has required to reach her ripe age – and, in turn, the life-giving, awe-inspiring fertilizer her energy and spirit continue to give to those lucky enough to know and love her. It is with deep appreciation and recognition of the gift of a long life and memory of past periods of growth and learning I embrace this opportunity to reconnect with Myra and Rosemary, two of my pillars of inspiration throughout my adult life. It is an honor to be considered worthy to share time with them now. And the lessons from their fertile lives and minds continue to nurture me.
The heart and spirit are always “tending to” something that spurs us onward, it’s just not always obvious in the moment. My very happy hibiscus reminded me this morning I have been “living” when I thought I was “drifting” this year all along. And that whatever modest nurturing I think I have to offer has been enough to support a long marriage, two beautifully thriving adult children, and now one happy little hibiscus in my dining room named Bernadette.
