Appreciate growth as spring starts

I don’t know what’s going on in your garden, but mine thinks it’s spring. Tender green shoots are pushing up through the mulch and carpet of last autumn’s leaves. Tiny leaf buds are forming on the shrubs and trees.

I worry about them. It’s still too early and they are much too young. The ground below is still frozen and bad weather could return any day. I’m afraid they aren’t strong enough, but there is only so much I can do.

To borrow a line from Kermit the Frog: It’s not easy being green. Green is new and fresh and soft. Green is young. Green is temporary.

Think about a leaf. Young leaves are green. They unfurl out of tight buds and open into soft supple foliage. As long as they continue to take sunlight and change it into food and fuel, they are green. But as they mature, brilliant scarlet and gold – the leaves’ true colors – are revealed. And, ultimately, it is the leaves in full flush that we remember as beautiful.

Years ago, I attended a conference on aging and listened to a geriatric specialist – an expert on the care of older people – speak. When asked about the best way to manage aging parents, strong individuals whose personalities remain vibrant even as their bodies weaken, she reminded her audience that physical aging doesn’t diminish the qualities that make us unique. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Growing old refines and distills us. “When we get older we are exactly who we always were, only more so,” she said. It took a few years, but now I think I understand what she meant.

I am of a certain age. That means I can look back at more years than I probably have ahead of me. I’m not so green anymore. But that’s OK. I’m stronger for it.

In some profound ways I was a late bloomer. My private joke is that I didn’t get a real backbone until I was 40. It came in a package with drug store reading glasses, silver streaks in my dark hair and a body that looks like a candle in a hot oven.

I’m not the shy girl, or eager-to-please young woman I was, but I am still the person who lived inside the girl and young woman. Like a leaf on a tree, as I get older more of the real me is exposed. I am who I have always been, only more so.

Now, with three daughters and a son who are like those tender plants and buds outside that flirt recklessly with the early thaw, it’s hard not to worry about them. They are still so young.

I’d like to protect my children from what is ahead, but I know that if I don’t let them turn their faces to the sun and push themselves out of the darkness, if I don’t let them grow their own strong roots, or decide when it is time to let go, I will make them too soft to survive.

The days are getting longer and warmer. Suddenly, everything is sweet, and soft and green. Except me. My true colors are beginning to show and there’s no going back.

I don’t mind. I’ve had my spring.

Now I want to be one of those tough, curled, and colorful leaves that cling to the tree until the last possible moment knowing that when I fall, nearsighted eyes, crow’s feet, extra pounds and all, I will have made it to the place where I am real.