Living Happily Ever After
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Dandelion Death

Date: April 24, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” (Charles Darwin)

While doing yard work and weeding a few weeks ago, my middle son surprised me with a bouquet of dandelions. I was thrilled, delighted and quickly rushed to put them in water to preserve them for as long as possible. For that day, they sat in a vase on my kitchen windowsill. Soft, puffy, cushions of yellow sunshine. The next day they were dead.

I confess, I was a little surprised. It has always seemed to me that dandelions, creeping into grass, springing up unbidden, are hardy plants. And although I’m not a weed, flower or gardening expert by any means (as evidenced by the many plants and flowers I’ve managed to kill), I think there’s a life lesson somewhere in their short life span.

From my perspective, dandelions have it pretty easy. They bloom into being uninvited and there they stay. Cheery, yellow, WEEDY; rain or shine. They don’t need water, they don’t need fertilizer and it seems like lawn mowers even have difficulty making an impact on them! It’s an easy life, as long as they remain in their expected and “natural” habitat—outside. But pluck a few, put them in a vase full of water, and they’re dead by nightfall (or at the very latest, the next morning.) I expected them to last at least as long as flowers do in a vase of water!

With such an easy existence, dandelions haven’t had to learn to be hardy, to adapt to change or to challenge. They don’t appear to have ever had to “hang on” when times get tough. They haven’t had to develop roots. Hand them an unexpected new life—indoors, in a vase of water—and they wither and die faster than anything I’ve seen.

Makes you grateful for the unexpected life, YOUR unexpected life of growth opportunities, doesn’t it? Because it’s through our trials that we become stronger. Our challenges strengthen us (if we let them) and by triumphing over them, we become stronger. Better. More than we would otherwise have been. Draught, hardship, the unexpected life…cause us to develop roots and to sink those roots deep to survive. The character-conditioning program called life, especially the unexpected one, makes us more than we ever could have become on our own. And in the end, we master not just surviving new circumstances or new challenges, but blooming wherever we’re planted.

We can find happiness and joy in whatever garden, or yard, or patch of dirt, or pile of manure we’ve had the good fortune (or misfortune!) to land in. Life is good regardless of where life transplants you to. Sink your roots into the soil of your unexpected life, look for the beauties of it, count your blessings and strive not just to survive but to bloom.

“I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” (Clarissa Pinkola Estes)

The New Feel of Darkness

Date: June 14, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I wondered vaguely if this was when it would end, whether I would pull up tonight’s darkness like a quilt and be dead and at peace evermore.” (William Manchester)

When I was thrust into my unexpected life two years ago, it felt dark and very overwhelming. I confess, I probably had a moment or two where I could absolutely relate to William Manchester. Several nights I went outside in the backyard of my Colorado home to be alone, mourn my losses, cry, pray, and to try to figure out a plan: as in, how was I going to feed and shelter four children? By myself? And how was I going to not just start over, but start over “from a hole?”

Although, “There’s nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas,” (Mad-Eye Moody, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000), I was short on ideas and options back then! But at least I knew, “When the darkness comes, keep an eye on the light…no matter how far away it seems.” (Jan Berry) I’d been raised to believe in and have faith that “For every dark night, there’s a brighter day.” (Tupac Shakur) And it’s true. I know it now, just as I knew it then, as hard as it was to always believe it.

So I didn’t succumb to the night’s darkness. Despite the black hole that was my new world, I didn’t quit. I may have ended every day in tears by crying myself into a fitful sleep (what little I slept), and I woke up and cried when I opened my eyes to my new reality and realized it wasn’t a bad dream but my new life (THAT is something–when your reality is worse than a nightmare! LOL), but I carried on as best I could.

Last night, I was out in the backyard of my Utah home. It was late, close to 11 p.m., but I wasn’t alone or mourning anything; I was planting a garden with #5!

With our busy work and family schedules, that was the time we had available to do it–so I kept the dirt moist with water and held the camping lantern so we could see, and #5 dug the holes, placed the plants in the earth, and covered them with soil. We talked, laughed, worked side by side and enjoyed one another. And when we finished, #5 went to put the tools and equipment away. I was left, alone, in the late night blackness of a summer night.

It has been awhile since I’ve thought about the dark summer nights alone in my Colorado yard, but brief memories of that time came unbidden. I indulged in them for just a moment, wondering if I’ll ever experience dark summer nights alone without remembering that traumatic time in 2009 but also marveling at the difference time, and light, can make.

“I guess darkness serves a purpose: to show us that there is redemption through chaos. I believe in that.” (Brendan Fraser) So do I. Because I’m living proof. Out of darkness and chaos came redemption…in the form of a very unexpected life. Time and again I’ve seen it happen—in this century, in previous ones, to every person, everywhere, regardless of the challenge or struggle.

There is ALWAYS light, and life, at the end of the tunnel, your tunnel, whatever that challenge may be.

That’s life. And since that’s life, while we’re here, we ought to experience it and remember that, ”Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.” (Stefan Zweig)

And if you’ve never planted a garden late at night by the light of a lantern, I recommend you experience that too.

“See you in the darkness.” (Gary Gilmore)

Of Corpses, Fish and Flowers

Date: July 20, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” (T.S. Eliot)

I love “old-fashioned” flowers, like hollyhocks and peonies, but peonies are my favorite. Someone once told me peonies can live to be up to 90 years old. I don’t know if that is true, but it has made me love them even more.
I can’t imagine what they’ve seen and what they’ve survived to live that long.

Kind of like each of us as we live our unexpected lives.

My Colorado yard had LOTS of hollyhocks and peonies.

When I moved to Utah to begin a new chapter in my unexpected life, I left before my belongings. My former spouse, unemployed and waiting to be formally charged for the Ponzi scheme he perpetrated and the crimes he committed, moved my things to Utah for me after I was already working. Knowing how much I loved my peonies and that I had no money with which to buy new plants in Utah, the man I had divorced uprooted 2-3 peony plants from my Colorado yard and hauled them to Utah in buckets, hoping they could be transplanted in my new yard upon their arrival.

In the midst of working full time, tending my children in the evening, and trying to unpack and move in to our Utah home, one of the peony plants from Colorado died before I could plant them. I looked at it, dead, withered and lifeless in an orange Home Depot bucket, and realized I had a lot more in common with peonies than I’d thought. I felt like that plant looked and wondered if I was headed for the same fate. It felt like pieces of my heart were already there. But seeing the dead plant motivated me to plant the two remaining peony plants.

They looked dead, but I figured if that were the case, I couldn’t damage them further. I planted them in the middle of the July 2009 heat and went on living my life, not sure if they were alive enough to take root or if they’d survive the winter snow. I should have known better, though. I probably should have been more worried about whether or not they could survive my children!

Sometime during the winter, my four year old came to me one day, proudly holding an entire peony plant that he had uprooted. “Look Mom! Look what I found trying to grow in our yard! Look how strong I am! I ripped this whole bush out of the ground all by myself!”

My eyes were huge as I looked at the accomplishment dangling from his little hands–my peony plant, roots and all.

The loss of a plant, considering all I had lost, seemed like such a little thing. And it sounds petty, but in a year of disappointments I couldn’t help but add the peony plant to the list. But at the same time I acknowledged there were a lot bigger losses and issues in life, and in my world, than the loss of one pink peony plant. I had experienced too many to count in 2009 and as usual, knew I could choose to laugh or cry about things, so I shook my head at the absurdity of uprooting a plant from its home, hauling it several hundred miles in a bucket in the summer heat, transplanting it when it was mostly dead and with winter coming…and a small child finally doing it in.

I laughed.

It wasn’t THAT big a loss, but it’s still true: “Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.” (Bill Cosby)

It reminded me of our attempt at having a fish for a pet several years earlier. The fish was new to our family when we left on a vacation to Africa for one month. And wouldn’t you know it, I forgot to arrange for anyone to feed it while we were gone! I realized my mistake partway through the trip and prepared myself for a dead fish when we returned home. To my shock, the fish was alive and swimming in its bowl when we returned to Colorado! I fed it, changed its water, and secretly admired the little fish’s survival instinct. The next evening however, as I did the dinner dishes, I realized the fish was missing. Apparently, our cleaning lady had come, hadn’t realized anything was swimming in the fish bowl, dumped the contents down the drain and washed the bowl!

In the case of the peony plant, all I could do was compliment my son on his brute strength, give his “huge” arm muscles a squeeze of admiration, and help him heft the remnants of my peony plant into the big garbage can outside. Another peony dead. Sometimes the best laid plans die or don’t work out due to circumstances beyond our control.

One peony plant was left, but who knew if it was even alive, or if it could survive the rest of the winter?

I was walking in my yard recently and saw it. The peony plant was still in the ground, thankfully. It was finally green. And to my surprise, there were blossoms getting ready to bloom! Who ever would have thought? And after all of this time, one year since it was first uprooted, has passed?

“Where flowers bloom so does hope.” (Lady Bird Johnson)

It looks like I’m going to have peonies after all. With my hope. In my unexpected life.