My Rose Bush

For years there was nothing I wanted more than to be a momma. Mothers' Day is often a hard day for many people for a variety of reasons. For me, for a long time, it was yet another reminder that I wasn't yet the one thing I had known all my life I wanted to be. 

So, that first year after the kid was born, Mothers' Day was huge - emotionally speaking - for me. The kid was about 3mon old and I was just coming out of the fog of post-adoption depression. I felt like we were finally settling in to life as a family of 3 (plus dog). And I needed to do something to mark the occasion. Something beyond going out to eat and opening a card. Something beyond going to get a massage (which hubby arranged and I did love). I needed it to be something more permanent.

So I went with my momma and bought a rose bush.

We always had them growing up. (My mom still has them and man, they're beautiful!) Every so often, my mom would cut a couple in the mornings for me to take to my teachers in school (elementary school, of course). I loved taking them in. I loved having them in the backyard. There's just something about rose bushes that, for me, signifies motherhood.

I can't quite put it in to words, how important having my own rose bush was. They remind me of my mother, who is of course my primary reference point of being a mom. So, in buying my own, and planting it, it was like further establishing my own roots as a mom in my own right. Proving to myself that I was a mother. Because after all that IF, sometimes I needed as much tangible proof as I could get.

When we moved several years later, I made hubby dig that thing up and move it with us, then replant it in our new backyard. The thought of leaving it there felt like abandoning part of me. It took me a long time to find the perfect spot in the backyard.

And last year, the kid's first in school, there was great pleasure - and healing - in snipping a couple of my own beautiful roses, wrapping them in wet paper towel and sending them with him to give to his teacher. That simple act, for me, it says motherhood.

That rose bush, that little plant, well, it reminds me of so much. Every spring as the leaves sprout, and then the blooms turn red, I watch and smile. It's grown so much, is so much taller and fuller than it was when I first bought it almost 7 years ago. I noticed today that this winter it's finally grown taller than me.

Just like that rosebush, I've grown in the last 7 years. Not taller certainly. And fuller definitely. But so is my life. So much fuller. I look forward to seeing it bloom this year. And seeing the growth it, and I, will experience.


Today's Lesson: Motherhood, just like a rose, is not defined by its name but rather by its beauty. And its thorns. But that's a post for another day.