Maybe your kids are like mine and complain that when you tell them not to kick a soccer ball into your tree peony, they whine “Sometimes it’s like you care more about the flowers than us.” Frankly, sometimes I do. I can even tell you exactly when I cared more about my flowers than my children. It was last Thursday.

It was evening, the boys were playing outside and I had just coerced Conrad to put the soccer ball down and do his homework before we kicked it around so we could have more time to play. Dashiell was wrapped up in an imaginary game of Star Wars and slaying an imaginary Rancor with his real light saber (actually its a pool noodle with duct tape). While helping Conrad use a number grid to count by tens, I could hear Dashiell’s “Hasiwaki Yas” the international ninja/Jedi/badass language for “take this and that” but I didn’t pay attention because I was amazed to find that I actually understood Conrad’s math homework and that much to my surprise, he did too. We finished the math problems and I told him to put the assignment into his backpack, Conrad turned towards the house stopped short and screamed.

I looked over in his direction and I could see the head of one of my prize allium on the driveway. Immediately, I knew what had gone down, but I didn’t want to know, I couldn’t believe it was true. “Conrad, you need to tell me how bad it is before I see for myself.”

“It’s pretty bad mom. Pretty bad,” he said.

Dashiell came strolling around the corner of the house holding his light saber.

“Dashiell, did you slay my beautiful purple flowers with your light saber?” I asked.

“No,” he said smiling,

“You did! You’re lying I can see them,” Conrad hollered.

“Dashiell…. did you…”

“Noooo,” he said stamping his foot and then, as always, he followed with, “I didn’t know,” still trying to smile his usual get out of jail free smile.

I walked towards the bed and saw 20 of my prize flowers—flowers that had grown to be a majestic four feet tall and gave me a sense of accomplishment every time I pulled into the driveway—broken and smashed and strewn all over the walkway. I was in shock; I had been waiting months for them to bloom, actually years. When I was a kid, my father grew allium around a bed that encircled a flagpole we had in our backyard and they were the first real sign of summer, fresh cut grass and freedom.

What was worse, this was not the first time I had told Dashiell to leave them alone. I know they are tempting. They are tall, alien-like purple globes that practically beg you to cut them in a stunning bouquet or to a four-year-old slash them in half with one ninja-like strike. But I had promised myself I wouldn’t even cut them. Last summer I had seen people let them dry in their gardens and they looked antique and otherworldly next to the fresher just bloomed flowers in the beds.

Now I would have to wait an entire year to see my plan come back to life. I was inconsolable.

“Go now, go now to your room,” I yelled not caring that our neighbors, Molly and Sean and her mother who was visiting could hear us next door.

I wanted to weep and I wanted to scream but instead I left because I was too angry. I walked around the block convinced that I never had trespassed into my parent’s world this way. Never. Why is Dashiell so willful? So determined, so damn disrespectful sometimes? It was me, I give in to those dimples and smile too easily. I tell myself he’s still little and needs attention but he knows better. I turned the corner and saw my house again, there was nothing I could do but walk back home, pick up the broken flowers so I wouldn’t have to look at them anymore. I made a low bouquet feeling nauseas and betrayed. There was only one person who would understand. I called my mother.

“Oh Chessie,” was all she said and I knew she knew my heartbreak. She suggested I make him plant something with me tomorrow, “and not something small, something he really has to dig a hole for and work hard at. Choose something you will love as much a delphinium or wait for lupine.” I could hear Dashiell hysterical crying up in his room, but I didn’t mind, it was high time a line was drawn. I got off the phone and Conrad came up to me and said, “I know you liked the flowers in the ground, but they also look pretty in that bouquet.”

“Thanks bunny, I said. I’m just really hurt.” I said and he walked away.

I know its just a few flowers, I know they will grow back but it felt like there was  no space of mine that I had not allowed Dashiell to make his own, this includes, my side of the bed because I wake up at 5:30 to find him tangled around me, my belly fat which he pinches, my butt that he slams soccer balls into, my breasts he still tries to grab, my nose he wants to pinch, my eyes he likes to kiss, my clothes he wants to touch with buttery fingers or a ketchupy face and now my garden. I let David put him to bed as his hysterics continued. I didn’t go up and wasn’t going to go until 8:30 when David came down and said, “The point has been made and now he’s asking for you,” he said.

I went upstairs. Dashiell was lying in his bed still hiccupping tears and said, “I’m sorry I hurt your plants mommy,” as he reached out for a hug. I held him and tried not to cry. “Never do that again.” I said.

“I won’t,” he said.

When the weather gets better I am buying a tall Delphinium because I want to believe him.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Random acts of mothering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.