My Birthday Garden

How are relationships like plants?

This probably isn't the best comparison for me because I notoriously kill plants. Paul is the gardener in our family. But let's see where this goes. 

Sometimes in school I use a creative problem solving approach called synectics to encourage my students to think about the relationships between two seemingly unrelated items. Synectics means "the joining together of different and apparently irrelevant elements."* 

Maybe this technique was percolating in my subconscious as we read a book about the different adaptations of plants surviving in cold weather.

• Did you know arctic poppies have cup-shaped petals to catch sunshine? 
• Did you know cushion plants grow close together to protect each other from the cold?
• Did you know snowdrops are tough enough to push up through frozen soil?

Hey, look at that! I love sunshine and try to catch it as often as possible. I like to snuggle when it's cold, and sometimes I have to do hard things. I just never realized how much I have in common with winter plants.

Relationships are like plants too. We need to plant them, nurture them, and, yes, sometimes trim them. When I published my book last month, I was reminded that sometimes relationships lay dormant for a season before they rebloom. One amazing joy of publishing There's Spaghetti on My Ceiling has been reconnecting with friends, sometimes about memories that had been pushed so far down in the dirt I forgot they were planted there.

My sorority sister texts, reminiscing about the time I found her sobbing hysterically because someone died. As I consoled her, I realized she was mourning the death of a character in a Danielle Steele novel.

I'm laughing with my high school friend as she reminds me of the time we invited her over for dinner and my mom served lamb with mint jelly. I swear mom has never cooked lamb before or since that night.

I'm listening to a coworker laugh about the time we were worried about rain before the big field trip and then the hallway by my classroom flooded. We rolled the big yellow mop bucket down the hallway wondering how it ended up being wetter inside the school than out.  

No two plants are exactly the same. My friends and family don't expect me to be an exotic orchid when I'm clearly more of an arctic poppy. I have my own adaptations, and they appreciate being with a detail-oriented planner with a sense of humor. (Most of the time!) Yes, they may grumble when an overly cheerful travel companion wakes them up at 4:00am with a rousing, "Good morning, Sunshine!"  But they also know we won't miss our flight and we have a fun destination ahead. 

I wonder, if there was no pandemic, if I would have planned a big soiree to celebrate turning fifty. Or if I still would be content, as I am now, cherishing the seeds of friendship we've planted throughout the years and appreciating each and every unique bloom. One friend shared how much my stories resonated with her and made her realize how much we have in common. Although we don't often see each other and can't be together right now, it made her feel connected. "In my head we are such close friends," she tells me. In my head too, my friend. In my head too.

*Gordon, William J.J. Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity. (New York: Harper and row, Publishers, 1961), 3).