A Tulip Bulb

I’ve been thinking about why a mother’s heart gets heavier long after her kids have left the coop. Remember when a Band-Aid and kiss made everything better? Remember when grounding or taking the keys away was effective for curfew-violating 17-year-olds?  Remember when you had the benefit of the dinner table to process, inquire or facilitate your child’s navigation through challenge? As parents, we try as long as we can to help or direct a path through pain. We try to control the platform from which to help them. Eventually our kids are charged with crafting their own lives. And just like that, our ability to provide a map through sorrow is not so easy.  

When our grown kids suffer loss or broken expectation, we feel it acutely. It’s especially hard because we may feel helpless; unable to fix with the Band-Aid or a kiss on the knee. The urge to barrage a suffering adult child with calls and texts and inquiries of “how are you?” are tempting; but the wise part of me realizes no matter the bombardment of motherly concern, our kids need to pilot on their own with their own. In other words, they need space to figure out the aches of life. Can we all agree that such space is hard to give when you love someone so much? If only we could spare our kids, but we can’t. We’re left to deal with the balance of when to help and when to let go, knowing full well we can’t remedy the churning and tossing in the aftermath of an unexpected curveball. 

A dear friend taught me a lesson this week in how to navigate a grown child’s heartbreak. We all can relate to the hollowness of words. Yes, saying something is better than saying nothing; but often we are tongue-tied or tongue-rambled by the inability to articulate fully our sorrow or mend our child’s shattered heart. It’s hard.

My friend felt the same way. Heartbroken by her daughter’s profound loss, she relied on more than words. Instead, my friend planted tulip bulbs all along the periphery of her daughter’s driveway knowing in her wisdom that come Spring, sprouts of new life will rise. This was such a great lesson for me. Here was a young woman broken by her loss, and there was her mom, trusting in newness buried somewhere deep beneath the darkness of the soil. My friend already knows that eventually, her daughter’s heartbreak will breed new life: tulips. How wonderful to give despair a bit of space for hope to arise; in due time and with such color.

If only our children could have a pass in heartache. Chances are, pain will catch up with them somehow. It’s just the way it goes. I guess my wish is that somehow, when our kids are faced with the uninvited journey, there’s something waiting for them just beyond a mother’s reach that offers an invitation for good to rise again. What I’ve come to learn is love and hope are revealed in infinite ways. I’m so grateful to my friend for showing me that possibility for healing can come in the form of a tulip bulb. Trust the darkness, absorb the richness surrounding you, and be patient. What my friend’s daughter now knows for sure, is that come March, hope will have the last word, at least for this moment of her sadness. I think I’ll piggy-back on that same hope.