Mama C and the Boys

his vase, my flowers

His vase.
Flowers from my garden.
His chair.
My table.
Our new home.

Shrek is moving in.

My chest seizes.
My breath slows.

Surrender I’m told.

Don’t think I haven’t heard that before.

I don’t know how to depend on anyone.

Except me.

I start to cry. I tell him that I want to believe in this, and it is so hard for me to believe in this. I need him to believe even more than I do in this right now. Because depending on anyone to really show up, and be present for me and these boys is not the cloth I am cut from.

I started a family on my own for a reason.

It is all I have really known for almost nine years.

I’ve gotten so good at doing this alone.

What if I’m not as good at doing this with someone else?

Do you see this as a good thing? Do you see that being in a committed loving relationship will make it easier?

The pause is pregnant. I want to. I know that I want to. I am almost there an awful lot of the time. I’m not there a lot of the time too. It must be hard to believe in me at those moments. But he does. Because I need him to. Because he needs to too.

When I can’t seem to get myself from the middle where my panic in this transition lives, to the new place where he seems to be dancing alone on our new island humming; “I’m having the time of my life,” I think of that vase.

Alone a vase has a great deal of potential for beauty.

Cut flowers on a counter, are not going to survive very long that way.

But when you put them together?

Something new and stunning happens.

Of course, wild flowers outdoors look magnificent there too.

Yes, they do, and they run the course of their lives intentionally that way.
Then they shrivel up, and return to the soil, and come back up next year, and do it again,

and again.

In a vase, or outside.

Impermanent radiance.

Yes, I want to tell him, I do feel the benefit, the thrill, the love, the possibility
and at the same time I also fear that which is so terribly unknown.

I love all that we can be, these flowers and this vase. I love how open you are, and how you hold me in all my glory for every fleeting moment that is now, always. I love your strength, and your fragility. I love your stance. I love your dance. I love your patience and your desire.  I love this vase, and how much more purposeful you become with me inside you.

His vase.
My flowers.

Shrek is moving in.

11 comments

  1. I just started following your blog. This story was beautifully written and timely. I started reading this minutes after placing some yellow flowers from the garden in a vase that I just unpacked. I just moved into a house and I feel so unstable and excited and many of the feelings you shared above. I’ll be thinking of you and your beautiful family as you take this brave next step.

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  5. Wow, Mama. I started my new job February 6– and have been a reader, but a less rigorous reader (apparently)– I had missed this entirely!! Worrying that perhaps I had lost the ability to read, I searched and see that your first mention of Shrek is on Feb. 2— when I was lost in new-job fear. As it turns out this job is not a good one in terms of the time demands– for a mama committed to actually spending time with her daughter, as I am. So perhaps your move-in will also signal my move onward and out… we’ll see. But I did re-read and am all caught up now and so happy for you and for him. I do relate to all the fears and worries about giving up control and autonomy especially as a parent. But I think it is likely that they (fear and worry) will give way to something wonderful for all of you. Miss “talking” to you more. Mazel tov, as my people say. Much love, xo Laura

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