Finding Beauty in the Ick

Or...If it doesn't have a purpose is it worthy of our time?

My mom was a mover. She ate breakfast (often a small bowl of yogurt with bird seed granola and some frozen raspberries from Duane and Evelyn) standing at the bathroom sink while getting ready for the day. She would watch tv but only while standing up ironing or folding laundry. She would find beauty but only while on a hike or walking the dogs or moving from one museum gallery to another, touring a cathedral.

She wasn’t a sitter. She wasn’t a good relaxer or well versed at being slow. She once fell while walking our old dog Maggie in the ravine behind our old house. She couldn’t put weight on her arm and she did was any normal person would do: after a failed attempt to send Maggie home to get my dad, she got herself out of the ravine, drove herself to work, preached two sermons, then went to the hospital and found out she had broken her elbow.

Yesterday, for no other reason than seeing beautiful things, my family and I went to a flower farm about an hour away. We meandered through rows and rows of flowers. We stopped at multiple brightly colored adirondack chairs just so the three year old could say delightedly, “look at this chair mama! It’s so beautiful!” We sat and drank coffee in a small pergola hidden away in a huge rhododendron bush (tree?) and I resisted the urge to push us along, to keep moving. So I just sat there with my smiling baby, a three year old making ghost noises, and my husband. I didn’t rush us until I could tell that both the 3 year old and the baby needed to eat sooner rather than later. I didn’t rush us until we needed to rush.

As we were getting on the freeway to drive home my husband said, “I can’t stop imagining talking to your mom about this.” I said I know, that’s how I feel about just about everything these days but especially when we do something new. I said, “She would have loved it.” In my head though I couldn’t shake this feeling that she would have had to worked to enjoy it. She would have had to work hard to relax and be present for no other reason than the beauty.

Thankfully, I inherited my dads’s ability to stop when it is appropriate to stop. I inherited both her need for the dishes to be spotless and his need to not be the person actually doing the dishes (sounds like fun for my husband, right!?). I got his crazy eyebrows and her appreciation of having fresh flowers in the house. They could both find beauty in the ick - in the muddy, flooded dog park and in the crocuses of early Spring.

As we consider our long term plans and goals — what does it mean to be able to make our life without my feeling tethered to my parents? who knows — I am trying to not take this, the most beautiful season in the PNW, for granted. I am savoring the flowers and though my life isn’t always beautiful and is almost always a little bit gross trying to find beauty in the midst of it all.

Our newly planted memorial garden - mompost™ and dad’s ashes mixed into the soil and surround this new lilac bush. Sweet and funny. Sweet because they were my mom’s favorite flower and funny because after over 40 years of marriage she still brought them into the house even though my dad was allergic (or so he said).