a vase of daffodils

Last weekend, I read an article in the newspaper that made me think. The author said that in our culture, happiness is so highly valued that melancholy and sorrow have no place. He referenced a poem, in which John Keats praises autumn as being part of a whole life, and writes about the beauty of decline and the waning day.

I thought about all this yesterday, when my beautiful, tousled children came tumbling through the door, with arms full of every daffodil I so carefully planted last fall. They were so happy to have found these pretty flowers to bring to me, and how could I scold them for thinking about something I would enjoy? “These are for you!” they beamingly announced, and I gathered them up (children and flowers) and loved them.

I wonder about this feeling that mothers have. I hold my baby and wish he would always stay this age, this exact level of chubbiness, with this same number of teeth. I look at my daughter, singing and cutting construction paper to tiny bits, and my heart aches to think of the young woman she’ll be, when my singing little girl is gone. Everyone says, “this time goes so quickly” as though that’s to reassure me, but much of the time I don’t think I want it to.

And my reaction to these thoughts is usually simply to go wash the dishes and not think about them. But yesterday, when they brought me the flowers they’d picked, not to live out their lives bringing beauty to the front yard, but to die in a vase in the kitchen, I realized something. Difficult as it is for me to see my children grow, and know that step by small step I’m losing them to the adults they’ll be, there would be no beauty for them without the experiences they’ll gain as they grow. They are not cut flowers to wither in the heat of my kitchen. They’re growing, out in the yard, in the sunshine. I’ll have to admire them, love them from afar, but keep my hands off and leave them there to grow.

My sons will become men, wincing when I call them their cute baby names. My daughter will become a woman, calling me for advice with her own family. And it will be better, even with the sorrow a mother keeps, than keeping them as they are forever. The sorrow is my treasure, part of what makes my own life more complete. And in the end I wouldn’t keep them as they are after all. Because although there’s a fragile beauty in part of a life, there is so much greater beauty and depth in the whole.