Sunday mornings are deck time. I brew my favorite coffee and select a favorite book (or a new one from one of my favorite reading sites) and cozy up to the Sunday morning sunshine on the deck. There's something about the fresh air, sunshine, and those incredibly sweet aromas from the rose garden that transpire my Sunday from peaceful to sublime.
As summer sets and the roses begin to fade, I find myself longing for the rose gardens mom and I shared as I grew up. Our love of the rose garden knew no boundaries. We had roses of every color, and variety. The climbers on their rickety trellises grew alongside tea roses with backdrops of pine trees, rail fences, and sandstone boulders. We'd figured out that a rose garden, without some evergreen color just wasn't the same. And we celebrated rose season, from beginning to end.
One summer afternoon, after my oldest daughter was born, mom invited me to join her in the rose garden. She'd set a table for two, and prepared tea (something she rarely ever drank, and then only her own blend of rose hip and black pekoe leaves). I settled my daughter in her carrier, and joined mom in the garden. We talked about babies, growing children, and life. She reminded me of the hours we'd spent in Grandma's garden, sipping milk tea years before when I was the child. The moments passed and we enjoyed our tea, celebrating life, and the passing of time, generations, and the eventuality that I would be having tea with my own daughter. The memory comes rushing back to me often... That stillness in the garden and mom's wild roses. The wild roses made a hedge around mom's back patio for years.
When mom passed away, my sister moved into mom's house and the first thing she did was rip out the rose garden. She hated the thorny shrubs.
In their place she let the choke cherries grow. When I've visited my childhood home in recent years, I've thought about the hours mom and I spent on the gardens. I'm saddened at their passing, and yet... The memories remain clear. The roses were our treasured time spent together, and so much more... I treasure similar moments with my daughters, although, not necessarily the same with each.
The realization that there are variables in how children remember their parents, and what times are most treasured comes as no surprise. I often wonder what moments my children will treasure most.
My older daughter and I often road-tripped to the mountains, our get away from the summer heat. Neither of us like the heat, or the furnace blasting sun of summer. So our escape was a mountain spring to walk along, where we could enjoy the cool refreshment of cold clear mountain water.
My younger daughter and I found our hideaway in an Alaska road trip, one of my first visits there. An escape into the wilds of Alaska where moose roam free, and bear live peacefully in their natural state. We intruded on their reserve.
Determined to connect over the decadent richness of a wilderness so vast that we could never fully explore it, no matter how often we tried. And yet, still we connect over the vast expanses of spacial awareness, with a cup of hot coffee, our conversations often return to the wilderness of Alaska, a place we both found peaceful and serene.
The boys and I often relate on a different level, seldom a place or drink of choice.
My oldest frequently calls just to run a thought past me... Mechanically inclined, his efforts to connect often include testing brakes, or the sound of an engine, or a change in the highway. At one time or other, we've traveled some serious roads together - with him talking to me on the cell phone, or with me in the cab beside him in his favorite truck. The concept of riding and talking isn't lost on me... I've been 'down that road' before.
And then the baby...
It's true, what they say. Your youngest is always the baby, no matter that they have outgrown you, stand tall and strong on their own, and can accomplish the world without you at their side... They'll still be the baby. A mother's baby is always a babe in arms, in her mind. And yet... when I need someone to lean on... He's there. He finds me, no matter where I am. He finds me and fills the need to be supported, encouraged, motivated, or challenged.
As much as they each aspire to greatness, and have achieved much. As often as I watch each of them move beyond the common place goals and stretch to achieve their own mountainous dreams, living life on their terms, I realize that each moment we spend together, from the oldest to the youngest, the moments I treasure most are those moments where I get a glimpse into the future and understand that each of them will remember they were treasured by me.
Thank you Lord, for letting me see that each of my children, as different as they are, know I treasure the persons they are becoming... Every single day.
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Take time out to treasure your children and let them know how much they are loved.
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