April 19, 2001
Some
Flowers Bloom Dead
You may remember reading about the tree
Marty planted in our yard after I miscarried last fall. After the miscarriage, we wanted
to do something special as a memorial, so we picked out a dogwood for the front yard and
planted a dozen tulips around the trunk.
We were happy with what we chose. The
tulip is one of my favorite flowers, and dogwoods remind us of our homes in Georgia. Also,
we hoped by choosing spring plants maybe we would see them bloom around the time of the
due date that was not to be (May 8).
The tulips started coming up a few weeks
ago. They started with little green tips poking out of the soil before the weather even
started to feel like spring. I watched them closely. All twelve of them seemed to be
growing well. It was good to see them getting a little taller every day.
Then last weekend I looked out the window
as we were painting the dining room, and noticed that the tulips looked much shorter.
Actually, they looked like they’d been kidnapped. I could see green on the ground
where they had been, but there was no sign of the leaves anywhere. So I went out and took
a closer look. Something had eaten them, every
single one of them, down to the level of the soil. Stems and all.
Now this is where I could talk about how
sad this made me.
But I think you can probably imagine.
I don't know for sure who was responsible, but judging from
some of my neighbors' experiences it seems likely that it was squirrels. Although it
certainly could have been rabbits or even deer, for all I know. But it really doesn’t
much matter who did it. It just hurt my feelings very badly.
A week later, the green parts are starting to grow again,
but I think with the stems all cut off they’re never going to have any flowers. And
anyway, who knows how long it will be now until they get chewed off again?
I have been thinking about this a lot. (It’s hard not
to think about it, when I see these poor stunted flowers in my front yard every time I
leave the house). And even though I don’t blame myself for being sad about this,
another part of me recognizes the absurdity of the situation. If this happened in a novel
I was reading, I would roll my eyes and think, Why
don’t you sledge me over the head with that symbolism one more time? I didn’t
quite catch it when you whanged me the first time.
It’s true. Any writer who used such overt symbolism
would probably be called ham-fisted, obvious, and melodramatic. But it didn’t happen
in a novel. It happened in my life. And I guess truth is just triter than fiction
sometimes.
Anyway. The good news is that the dogwood looks like
it’s doing all right. The little bracts are getting bigger and they look like
they’ll be opening up later this spring. I hope. I would really like something alive to come out of this experience. |
