Funny Thing Called Parenting

This is a summary of today’s post .

• The helianthus and rudbeckia inject a crackle of yellow into the late summer garden and the American goldfinches visit; we are awash in golden yellow, positively drenched in it, and it teaches the gardener a life lesson.  The wistful end of summer reminds us that our kids will soon be off to college and we will be left behind.  We wonder how it all happened so fast, and every parent knows this poignant feeling.  The garden, our children, they must all find their own ways in life, and we are not as much in control as we think.
• Also, please check out the photos posted in the area to the upper left, “Weekly Garden Photos”, for some new and beautiful pictures of what is going on in the heat of the late summer garden.
• And in the “What I’m Reading” section (lower right), we are reviewing The Swerve , by Stephen Greenblatt. This is sold as a sort of Dan Brown-like narrative tells how an itinerant book-lover rescues a rare text from oblivion and totally changes modernity. To someone like me, that is a completely irresistible premise. But sadly, this book never delivers anything like so satisfying a tale. Read my review and see if you agree.
• Meanwhile, in a detour from gardening, we are also talking about where money comes from. This is a mystery to some people but not to me. Check it out, under the caption “Snapshot: Where Money Comes From”, to the left of this post.

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Today I noticed those brilliant, canary yellow American goldfinches working over the seedpods of the rudbeckia and I realized that means summer is drawing to a close. The birds have raised their clutches of nestlings and are loading up on fatty seeds and protein for their long journey south. In a similar way, in the human world, kids are preparing to fly away too; they are packing to go off to college, and the sentimental, back-to-school mood is definitely in the air.

In my new end-of-summer and back-to-school state of mind, I notice the garden is making its late summer checklist of chores to be completed by the gardener before the growing season draws to an end:

• The helianthus are putting on a spurt of growth and are enjoying one crazy last hurrah of flowering. Check.

• Nearby, the sedums are putting up their fuzzy green flower umbels prior to their eventual rosy display. Check.
• The hummingbirds are busily sipping nectar from the large flowers of the red canna lilies before these tropicals close up shop in the cooler days of autumn. Check.
• The new wave of long-throated “obedient plant” ( Physostegia virginiana ) has begun blooming, freshening the late summer garden with another fog of pinkish-purple haze. Check.
• And yesterday, we saw the first blooms on the new flour o’clocks burst into view as August begins. Check.

But wait! They were supposed to be purple, and instead, I am disappointed to see they are yellow…Not, as I have lamented, my favorite color in the garden, but there you are. It’s just a personal preference, no hard feelings. I find yellow loud and a bit vulgar, to be honest; I don’t know why. It clashes with other colors in the garden and does not cooperate well with them; overall, I think it lacks subtlety. A bit of pale yellow here and there is okay and works well, especially with blues, but the yellow I don’t like much is that brassy orange-yellow, as in common daylilies and black-eyed Susans ( Rudbeckia ), a vigorous member of the coneflower tribe, though I grow them both and copiously too.

At the same time, yellow has taught me a valuable life lesson. I used to ruthlessly edit yellow out of my garden, but noticed that the more I uprooted it, the more successful I became in growing plants that were yellow. Naturally, this was very frustrating for the gardener, so the gardener (as if he were a very simple-minded cartoon character; Elmer Fudd, say, as I sometimes think of myself) foolishly redoubled his efforts to get yellow out of his garden, and yellow flourished there more and more, in the perfectly predictable way. Finally, the rather obtuse gardener got the message and changed his view (progress!), accepting that the garden is not all about the gardener and what the gardener wants, but is actually more about what the garden wants, in the long run. Possibly it is entirely about that and not about the gardener at all, I have even thought, in a rare modest moment.

That is part of the Tao of gardening; to the uninitiated or a casual observer, it looks simply like the gardener is making a garden, but the greater reality is that the garden is all the while making the gardener . And this is more and more true over time; the longer we have been gardening, the more we are products of our gardens, rather than the other way around. People, even some gardeners, think that the garden is that patch of flowers in the front yard, but really, the garden is behind the gardener’s eyes, not in front of them; the garden is interior . As I have mellowed, in the fullness of time, yellow has come more and more abundantly into my garden, and I am truly at peace with it. At last. Wise, no?

And so, to return to my original subject, of course the four o’clocks would turn out to be yellow. I might have known they would. What else could they be, as I ironically observed to myself on seeing them in bloom for the first time yesterday evening. Soon everything in my garden will be yellow, and no doubt after a while, I will come to be at peace with that too. I suppose that is how I will know my life is at its natural end, fulfilled.

This morning as I went off to work, I had to laugh as I noticed the bright yellow American goldfinches furiously working the seeds out of the yellow black-eyed Susans below the yellow showers of blooms on the helianthus and above the fresh new yellow blooms of the four o’clocks and daylilies. So it can’t be long now for me, really, before that whole natural end thing. Probably I will find heaven is like a big yellow orb of golden sunshine over an all-yellow garden, and eternal peace will descend upon me at last.

And just as the garden teaches us that it will be what it must be, so our children teach us the same lesson over time; they must be what they must be too. We gardeners, and we parents, have our plans and hopes and expectations, but we soon learn that we are not the only creatures with these attributes of willfulness and foresight. Here is how this funny thing called parenting works: we get to be helpful and benevolent influences, we parents/gardeners, and we get to be proximate observers as the miracle of life unfolds before us upon the canvas of our allotted time. Our gardens and our children find their own ways in life, and how much more interesting life is for that, I say.

One night many years ago, they place in your wife’s arms a tiny sleeping bundle with fine red fuzz for hair and you are instantly enchanted, and remain so for life. You are cast under a spell and enter into a deep, trance-like state. The next thing you know, she is eighteen and about to go off to college, and you wonder, how did this happen so fast, and how can we slow down the sometimes too-dizzying speed with which God’s grace bears us along through life?

Saturday, my daughter and I drove to Spring Lake in the convertible with the top down and the music blasting, on a cool summer morning that was simply ideal. It was indeed a rare thing to spend the whole day at the beach, just the two of us, and it was perfect. After a stressful week at work, I could go into the refreshing ocean, then lie in the warm sun and just feel the stress pour off me like the seawater rolling off my skin. It was heaven, and sorely needed. And my daughter was such a delight to be with – a poised, accomplished and funny adult, just a marvel, really – and I felt the melancholy of her leaving in two weeks creep stealthily over me like a drug, infusing me with sadness, though I particularly didn’t want to be sad that day. I wanted to be happy and upbeat, or at least to seem that way, which is nearly as good.

When I went to college, I felt nothing but excitement. I had no idea what my parents were feeling at the time, selfish creature that I was and that probably most teens are. For myself, I couldn’t wait to start the great adventure, and I know she feels that keenly too, unaware of how poignant it is for us. That night at home, after she and our son had gone off with their groups of friends, my wife got home from work and we just sat on the porch and had sandwiches and cold cantaloupe with wine, enjoying the cool summer evening and having this time for ourselves. Soon, we shall be two little old things in a porch swing on a summer night, holding hands and waiting hopefully for the phone to ring.

On the way to work today, I summarized the weekend to myself as I often do: I got to spend an entire day alone with my daughter just days before she leaves home to go to college; I went to the beach, which I love to do; the weekend was beautiful; I got to have quiet time alone with my wife; I got to take my son driving for the first time and to relish this small rite of his long passage into manhood; I took long walks with my dog; and I worked in my delightful garden, but not overmuch. All in all, pretty nearly perfect. I am a lucky man, really, and the world bowls along in a happy groove.

And thinking about our children and how completely besotted we are by them, especially in those tender times when they are about to leave us, I wonder if they are perhaps adored too much. Is there a word for the excessive love of one’s children, as uxoriousness is the excessive love of one’s wife? There should be. If not, perhaps I will invent one, I think, and I add it to the list of things to be worked on, things needing thoughtful attention. Because, as the garden slows down on the approach of cooler autumn weather and as the children fly from the nest of their childhood home, I can tell I am soon going to have a lot of time on my hands.