There is nothing that heralds spring’s arrival quite like a garden bed full of flower bulbs blooming. Tulips come in endless varieties and colors, some blooming as soon as the ground is warm enough for growth, others waiting until the last breaths of May to announce their appearance.
Daffodils, or narcissus, come in all sorts of varieties too. There are large ones and tiny clump forming versions that hold dozens of blooms, miniature trumpets raising their voices to the sky, proclaiming that the doldrums of winter are over.
There are the diminutive grape hyacinth, and their friends, the larger hyacinth. Both namesakes let off the most intoxicating fragrance—you can smell their presence before ever beholding it, and the scent lingers for weeks on end.
Snowdrops are the most demure of the spring bulbs. Tiny white flowers emerging from the frost, tipping their heads down in somber reverence for the winter slumber that ensures new growth.
Crocuses seemingly pop up and multiply year after year. Deep purple blooms with their yellow pollen filled stamen revealed as the surrounding petals open to the sunlight, beckoning the bees to wake from their rest and fill their pollen bags with bounty.
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I wasn’t at all prepared to give birth to my baby, or take care of him, in any measurable way.
Bringing home a premature 4.5 lb baby with no prior experience felt irresponsible, like giving a four year old a box full of matches, surrounding them with tissue paper and walking out of the house.
I had no idea how to get this child to eat or sleep, or how to find the time to eat or sleep myself. As the weeks went by, we found a rhythm and I found my way of coping with all the unknown laid before me: absolute control. My grip of control was tightest around who could touch Pascal and his allowance to be outside the home in the wide world of germs. Granted, I had explicit instructions from his doctor to protect him from getting RSV at all costs, and he prescribed exorbitantly expensive monthly shots to help ensure that Pascal would be safe from it. I had a reason to keep him isolated, myself isolated, but even good reasons can produce obsessive actions. My darkest days were spent alone in a townhouse learning how to be a mother, protecting my son and hanging on for dear life to the control I naively thought I had. I can remember dropping him off at the church nursery for the first time when he was 9 months old. It felt like the biggest leap of faith to let him be somewhere without me watching him, trusting that the God who formed him in my womb could possibly care for him in the darkness of this unsafe world.
As Pascal grew and survived sickness after childhood sickness, the clench of my jaw loosened. When the fog of fear dissipated, I was able to see what was unfolding before my eyes: the blooming of a precious life—one whose trajectory was determined long before it was placed in my hands.
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Most of the work involved in planting bulbs is in the waiting. Waiting for your order to arrive or for boxes to appear on store shelves. Waiting for the right moment to plant—not too early lest the warm weather lingers and too much growth occurs, and they are drained of all the energy they had stored up to bloom in the spring. You must not wait too long either, or else the ground will be too frozen and hard to dig a deep enough hole to allow the bulb to settle into its home. After successfully planting bulbs at the right time you must wait yet again for them to lay dormant beneath the soil, awaiting the cycle of productive sleep to run its course until the days become longer and the sun warms the earth.
(For part two of this three part series, click here)