Not to overwhelm you with another email, S’more, or Zoom, I took last month off and didn’t send anything out. But, I feel this story, with yesterday being Mother’s Day and May being Mental Health Awareness Month, I had to share this inspiring lesson of resilience. I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Thomas Boyce speak about “Is Your Child an Orchid Or A Dandelion? Unlocking The Science of Sensitive Kids”. He believes some children are like orchids, needing constant attention to thrive, whereas others seem to be like a dandelion, popping up everywhere and thriving in any condition (even if you pull them out of the ground or pop their blooms off to give to your mother - my favorite childhood past time). While the reference to orchids and dandelions may resonate with you and your experiences with kids, my story isn’t about those flowers, but about tulips.
Mother’s Day is full of great sadness because I have been motherless for most of my adult life. Before my mother died she received tulips as a gift, and because she was in her bed most of the time with debilitating pain and weakness from her cancer killing therapies, she decided to plant the tulips outside her front window of her bedroom so she could look at them. My mom never made it to Mother’s Day that year and those tulips seemed to die the moment my mom died. My family didn’t think anything of it until the following year when tiny shoots starting coming out of my father’s front lawn. He had no idea what they were and was ready to pull the “weeds” but waited instead. Could they be? No, there was no way those tulips could grow like that. My father watched these flowers bloom until they finally opened up on Mother’s Day! He quickly called (as I was not a mother yet) to tell me about this phenomena that just happened. Spring turned to summer, then fall, and winter and once again in April these flowers would grow and open up on Mother’s Day with more blooms every year to let us all know that even when our loved ones aren’t physically here; they are still here. But this is where the resiliency really comes in. This spring has been a cold, wintery one in the Chicago area. My father wasn’t sure if the flowers would survive the frosts, snow, and hail storms.
Yesterday, on Mother’s Day, my father shared a picture of 12 blooms just outside of the window that appeared to be smiling at me showing their vibrant colors and their determination. They also seemed to say to me, in my mother’s own way, “I know you are a mother. Happy Mother’s Day.” I can hear her say, “Honey, you may not be dainty as an orchid, or a nuisance like a dandelion, but you certainly can thrive, and show your pretty color and resilience for all to see like these tulips.” Thank you mom for the God wink today. May we all find those winks during this time of stress, anxiety, and unknown and remember lessons in resilience can come in odd ways -we just have to slow down and smell the…tulips.
