Wildflower Writes

I don’t remember making a big deal out of Mother’s Day as I child. I think we all went out to eat after church. At least that would make sense to me since Mom always cooked, but I can’t imagine either of my parents waiting for an hour for a meal at a crowded restaurant. I’m sure there were a string of homemade cards with the accompanying homemade verse. There might have been breakfast in bed a time or two, although Mom always seemed to be up before us. I imagine there may have been some offerings of wadded violets or dandelions as well. In my husband’s family, all the ladies wear orchids to church on Mother’s Day. I felt a little silly the first time, sporting one as a very unmotherly college student, but I felt a little special, too. On Mother’s Day, my home church gives out carnations to all the women. I thought it was merely an inexpensive choice, but it turns out carnations are traditional representations of Mother’s Day. It was the favorite flower of Ann Marie Jarvis, whose passin...

NPR dubbed it Economic Survivor’s Guilt. It’s that deep sense of guilt someone experiences when he or she still has a job, when friends or colleagues do not. It’s not the same as surviving a major event, like the Holocaust or 9/11. After all, these people are still alive. They’re with us every day. They still shop at the grocery store, attend church, and eat at restaurants. They are caring for their children, playing with their dogs, planning trips. Yet when I go to work every day, they have nowhere to go. When I expect a deposit into my bank account every two weeks, they’re hoping to hear from the unemployment office. As I juggle the demands of my boss and co-workers and my own agenda, they are scanning the classifieds and online listings for something that fits. When I complain about the hours or the stress or the unreasonable expectations, they are trying to fill their hours with meaningful things, struggling with their own identity. When I am wishing for a way out of the m...

It’s Saturday, and I have to go to work. Just a few minutes from home, I see an odd object in the opposite side of the road. It looks like maybe a branch that’s fallen off a nearby tree. I slow as I get closer- as much to see what it is as to comply with the speed limit in a hospital zone. It’s… an animal, an opossum. It’s perfectly still and upright. If it weren’t for the streak of red down the side of it’s face, I would have guessed it was alive. It’s not moving. It must have been flipped up on it’s haunches when it got hit by a car. I feel sorry for it. Then, I wondered. How many of us look like we’re upright and alive, but inside, we’re really dead? What does it mean to be truly alive? Is it having a lot of friends? Is it experiencing nature close up? Is it a script: Be born, go to school, get job, get married, have kids, retire, die? Is it the kind of fear experienced on a roller coaster or the happiness of falling in love? I maintain that life requires gr...