Mother’s Day is around the corner, as if you didn’t know. We celebrate birth moms, adoptive moms, stepmoms, and those in the almost-like-a-mom-to-me category. Hallmark made sure grandmoms had their own day in September, probably a good corporate and emotional decision. Mothers are elevated to sainthood the second Sunday in May, while the other days of the year moms might be the subject of tearful confessions to shrinks, where adult children empty their mothers’ apron pockets of all the sins put upon the children. Too tight an umbilical cord? Too loose a rein? Too much advice? Too little nurturing? “What mother sings to the cradle goes all the way to the grave.” (Henry Ward Beecher)
Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms, but especially the mothers in the twilight zone, raising adolescents. Raising roses is a good lesson in raising children during the transitional teenage years, when minor battles erupt into an occasional major war. This year’s gorgeous roses, a result of Mother Nature’s combination of rain, cold and super sunshine, attest to the fact that nature must take its course in the lives of roses. This message of nature taking its course seems to apply to bringing up children, too. However, the differences between roses and kids are clearly defined. Roses never talk back, and not one of mine has ever asked for the car keys.
Growing roses is a way to learn how to “grow” kids. From personal experience, I couldn’t have gotten through my grown children’s adolescence without my backyard roses. At least I could see the thorns on the roses, and once in a while, probably more frequently than that, I cut myself on one of those thorns. The rose taught me a lot of lessons. If the roses could speak, they would say, “Don’t overfeed me; don’t hover too much. Watch out for my thorns. Don’t remind me every day but once in a while you are going to get hurt. Help keep the bugs off me, or I could die or get sick. Other than that, just give me some time to grow with a little water and a lot of sunshine. I’ll do the rest of the work. Benign neglect will suffice.”
The War of the Roses takes on new meaning when dealing with adolescents. That 15th-century struggle for 30 years can be compared to a 30-minute struggle with a 17-year-old over curfew.
“Flowers are the sweetest thing that God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into,” H.W. Beecher says.
Doesn’t that sound like an apt description at times of a child going through the teen years? Doesn’t it seem on some days the soul, the essence of the real person, seems to be on vacation during some of the stormy days of adolescence? Don’t parents feel they are around someone with prickly stems and moods more varied in color than the rose?
On the other hand, there are days when a parent wishes she could freeze-frame a teenager when some good deed, some kind word is exchanged without the hint of that ever popular question, “Can I have “¦ ?” Sometimes the inner beauty of an adolescent shines through the way the outline of red comes through the cream-colored Double Delight rose, as though God took a red eyeliner to the rose, whose perfume scent is unforgettable. You just want to hug that rose, to crush its prickly-stemmed, five-petaled, captivating fragrance, but you know better. In the same manner, a parent is tempted to hug to the heart a prickly stemmed, five-feet-plus, sweating, basketball-bouncing or bubble gum-chewing adolescent, but you know better and move gingerly.
Rose bushes bring delight to neighbors and newcomers in every area of our community. We love and like our own, but sometimes we inadvertently compare our roses to our neighbor’s. Miniatures and monster sizes, orchid and orange in color, purple and peach in hue, grow compatibly in our community, and it seems we can appreciate our neighbor’s rose garden more than our own. We question our efforts, our own product. “Why can’t I grow roses the way my neighbor can?” is a legitimate question, but we must avoid comparing our children, more fragile than the flimsiest petal of any rose.