floral resistance

Paul Harding describes flowers as an act of resistance in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers.  

Reading this on the bus heading into Harvard Square this morning, I thought: Yes.  

There are reasons I love flowers: they are beautiful, vibrant; many help the local bee population. Their seeds are all different—some the size of a dot of the i, some wispy and irregular like a burr.  I like to spill the packets out into my palm and marvel at the strange seeds with their universe of potential.

But I love them for something else: I love them for their reminder that things take time.   Texts, emails, posts—they seem to suggest a different sort of time. There’s an urgency, an immediacy, that they suggest. There’s something detached from reality, detached from Nature’s time, about technology.

Flowers unfurl cell by cell, leaf by leaf, and then, petal by petal. I stand in the garden, dutifully watering them, coaxing them out, as the sun and the rain has done, and the soil. I tap my feet, I long for the hot red of the zinnia to bloom, the lashes of the sunflower to blink, the airy heads of the cosmos to dance. 

They take their time. 

There is no explaining to them that “there’s a drop dead deadline and hurry up already!” They respond to no bottom line, to no key stakeholder who “wants them blooming by Tuesday!”

I love this.

Flowers have their function in nature, but I tend to think of flowers as an indulgence. When I plant them, I do think of pollinators that will benefit from their pollen, but I also think of the way their blooming masses of color and texture will alight my kitchen table. I think of their beauty, which simply gives me joy and peace.  

In both time and function, then, I see that for me, growing flowers is an act of resistance. They are proof that there is still a Time that exists independent of my Tweets, and emails, and buzzing cell phone. The flowers are not feeding me (though I grow edible flowers too)—not my stomach anyway. They are feeding my soul, with their head and arms reaching for the sky, and drooping their heads when they grow heavy. They are growing, then sitting patiently, and dipping happily when a fat bumbler alights. They are the proof I need.

fomo

FOMO stands for fear of missing out.  

When does one get it? 

Generally, one gets it looking at photos of old girlfriends/boyfriends with their new people, or photos of friends traveling, or photos of everyone hanging out and you couldn’t be there.  

I feel it when I walk into the bookstore and see all these titles in print from grand authors and people younger than me. I feel it when I see pics of babes surfing in the sun while I’m sitting at work. 

FOMO. 

The questions are: 

1. Can I live someone else’s life? Successfully? 

2. Can I go back in time and change things? 

The answers to these questions: 

1. Yes. No.  

2. No. 

Can I live MY life? Authentically, truly, flawed, beautiful?  

Ya. Ya I can. 

I can change my life but, I will always be inside this body—I have lived what I have lived. And my life has been so beautiful. My life IS so beautiful: 

Today, I had a picnic in the park with my sister and my niece and nephew. There were only a few roses left in the garden by where we sat. A wasp flung itself at us and caused momentary hysteria.  After we ate, we curled up inside a cleft of the jungle gym together, all tangled and clammy and happy, hidden from the afternoon sun.

I was presented with cards, the most beautiful birthday cards to match the beautiful, shy, proud smiles, the beautiful bed head, and sun freckles.

This joy amidst the sea of meetings and spreadsheets. The joy amidst the sea of life. My heart bursts with joy at the thought of it. 

FOMO?  Hardly. Where else could I want to be?

Be someone else?  Who else is as blessed as I?

Is Email Life? And Other Things I'll Tell my Kids

When my kids are old enough, and definitely after they exist, I'm going to tell them: "Life is email. Life is email, and making new passwords because you've forgotten your old ones. Life is also wailing about all the things you have to do and not doing any of them until it's almost too late. So ya, where was I? Life is email, making passwords and kvetching balanced with procrastination." Then I'll remember after a couple seconds to add, "And contesting parking tickets. And meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. Meetings where people are told to do stuff and then at the next meeting, no one's done it. Meetings where everyone's late and if someone goes to look for someone whose late, the late person arrives and now the seeker is late. Meetings where you'll rush to fill the silence or else you'll think you might drown in it."

I'll tell them "If you're not doing any of these things, you've nailed it. You've made it." I hope it means they've become a traveling mime or a professional surfer. I hope it means they pay an assistant very well to take care of all their emails and forgotten passwords, to do lists and dishes, so they can wax their boards and practice miming what it's like to tight-rope walk over Niagara. Maybe my kids will bring back the megaphone and just blast all their messages through the streets over the air. They'll say, "Forget email. I'm just going to blast this message across a one mile radius and call it good." 

I won't really tell them that life is meetings and email, but I will warn them that it can easily become that if they're not careful. I'll also repeat what E. B. White told us is important in his mouse tale Stuart Little: A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon, a note in music, and the way the back of a baby's neck smells if its mother keeps it tidy.