Early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf.
—Robert Frost
My grandmother—Mama—loved flowers. She couldn’t walk in her later years, but she would find ways to creep out of her house and fawn over her hydrangeas in the garden beds. My father would be furious with her for walking without assistance, but Mama would always smile and wave away his worry. The flowers were a source of genuine joy in her otherwise barebones life.
As my grandmother was like my second mother, she passed down her love of flowers to me. I’m partial to perennials, like blueberries and echinacea, mostly because they come back every year. I grow a bit weary of things that don’t come back. So you can imagine my disdain for orchids.
Orchids are like pigheaded children. They are finnicky and moody and often take years to mature. Sure, in grocery stores, they’re in bloom. But once the blossoms die away, the plant is just a sprawl of long, curved leaves. Though orchids are perennials, decades could pass before they bloom again. Often orchids never bloom again. Why bother with a flower that seldom flowers?
One year my family decided to purchase an orchid for my grandmother on Mother’s Day. I must have been only nine years old, but I remember how Mama fussed over that silly thing—the ridiculous pile of purple petals that flowered for about two weeks. When the blossoms withered, Mama feared the orchid was not receiving enough sun. She asked my father to look after the plant.
My bedroom receives the most natural light out of every room in the house, so I promptly found myself roommates with a clump of green leaves. The thing sat on my desk for a decade. I hated it. I hated the tendril-like roots that snaked out of the pot. I hated the slotted design of the pot that let all manner of critters in and out, and I hated the bark mix that looked like rotting autumn leaves. I had work to do, and my desk space was clogged by the ugliness of overflowing leaves and exposed roots. Honestly, I thought, could this get any worse?
My grandmother never saw the orchid again. She died before it ever got to bloom. Of course, I took no thought for the orchid when Mama died. I was consumed mostly with the great sadness of losing someone who had been a second mother to me. If you have lost a motherly figure, perhaps you understand the pain. If you have not, then you cannot possibly imagine the sorrow.
But I went about life, as you must do. My friends and studies gave me no time to formally grieve. But most nights I cried myself to sleep, if I slept at all. Most nights I ate pitiful excuses for dinners, if I ate at all. Most days I spent dreaming up a way to rip my heart out of my chest cavity and throw it away, if I dreamed at all; usually there was only the nightmarish fog of despair. I dreaded the arrival of Mother’s Day, when everyone else could shower their grandmothers with affection, and I could not.
But Mother’s Day would not stop approaching, no matter how hard I prayed. I knew the bouquets of fresh flowers would soon appear in the grocery stores and line the aisles in a sickly array. I could not bear the thought of seeing all the bundles of petals without a grandmother to give them to.
Sitting at my desk one afternoon, a couple of days before Mother’s Day, I remembered the orchid. There was something different about it. It must have been the sun, reflecting off the strange little buds that had begun to form on the stem.
I started in my seat— There were buds growing on that cowardly string bean of a stem—plump, dark green buds—round and red-tipped and ready to open up to the sun.
If flowers could speak, I imagine that Mama’s orchid would have rebuked me for my hopelessness, and truthfully, I would have welcomed that rebuke. Those sweet little buds opened just in time for Mother’s Day, defying a decade of fruitlessness. Gorgeous plum-colored petals unfurled from those dark green pods. The blossoms filled my heart with sunshine until I spun about my room with irrepressible joy—genuine joy in my otherwise barebones spirit.
Perhaps I had no grandmother to give an orchid to, but God gave Mama’s orchid back to me. In a way, I suppose Mama gave me flowers that Mother’s Day. I swear I saw those petals open their speckled purple tongues, dashed with yellow, and sing. Or maybe the singing came from my soul. Either way, music filled that bedroom for the first time in months.
Mama’s orchid bloomed twice. The Mother’s Day we gave it to her, and our first Mother’s Day without her. A whole decade of barrenness passed in between, and I had never learned to love the green. Mama’s favorite color was green, and for ten years I resented that green leafage was all I had to admire—how stupid I had been.
All flowers wilt, as the orchid first had so many years ago. And every life is a vapor, as Mama’s life was. I watched as those beautiful orchid blossoms faded into a soft brown and dropped into the dirt, until only green foliage was left behind. But I have learned to love the green that leads—miraculously—to the purple.
I still have the orchid petals from that Mother’s Day—I keep them on my bookshelf. They are withered and dead, but they are beautiful. After all, God’s goodness doesn’t have to look like letting someone live. Sometimes it looks like loss. Sometimes it looks like a decade of silence, and then a reminder of His presence when we need one most. I’m still waiting for Mama’s orchid to bloom again. Maybe it never will. But in my waiting I will remember Mama and her tender spirit. In my waiting I will try to care for my garden the way she cared for hers.
In my waiting God is working, and He is good.