Around the House and In the Garden by Dominique Browning

Author:Dominique Browning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2002-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

SMELL THE ROSES

One summer my younger son informs me that, come September, I will no longer be permitted to walk him to school. Actually, Theo has been gently preparing me for months, dropping big fat hints that he can no longer afford to indulge me in this time together. He knows our morning walks are one of my favorite things, but he is painfully aware that no one else in the fifth grade goes to school with his mother, certainly no one hold hands with his mother or gets a kiss at the corner. Though he has been equally reluctant to say good-bye, as middle school looms a walk with Mom is just out of the question.

It is almost impossible to let go of that little hand. Of course, Theo has had just as much trouble as I have. Those early morning walks—how did they come to mean so much to us? They began, of course, out of necessity. We could have driven to school, but I refused to do that; the school is too close. Eventually I understood that we needed the slow start to the day: the foot-dragging; the whining and complaining (about cold, heat, hunger, sun, rain, nightmares, piano lessons, breakfast); the review of life’s small outrages (perpetrated by his brother, his cousins, his friends, his enemies, girls, rabbis, piano teachers).

I came to see that my morning job was to listen, and as there was nothing acceptable to say about Theo’s troubles, I began to insert garden instruction into his litany of woes. “I can’t believe I have to go to a piano lesson this afternoon,” he would begin. “My entire life is ruined and I have scheduling stress.” (Apparently the school day now includes classes on how to handle stress, a concept I had never even heard of when I was his age, during which children are taught to put their fingertips together and breathe deeply while they discuss “strategies to avoid riding the conflict escalator.”)

“Look, darling, there are Mr. So-and-so’s new French tulips,” I would reply. “What an amazing shade of orange, and what a great idea, to mix them in with the daffodils. Isn’t that beautiful, the way the low morning sun glows through them?” This would be met with a grunt, a new complaint. “Do I really have to take piano lessons? Why can’t I take tar lessons? Why can’t I take no lessons?” “And look at that carpet of purple, Theo. That’s ajuga, and it’s spreading through the lawn.” “Sure, Mom.” “Those red flowers are camellias, my love. They don’t normally grow so well this far north.” “Okay, right, whatever, Mom.”

And on it goes. Braced for his apathy about the gardens, I plow ahead, partly to counterpoint his aggrieved morning airs and partly out of a belief that if I give him the names of things in the gardens as we walk by, he will eventually care about the things themselves and grow up to be a gardener. So I persist, and he does, too—“I’m doomed, Mom.

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