On hydrangeas and moving and aging...

It was the hydrangeas that got me first. When we moved into this house on the last day of June, the mophead hydrangeas were in bloom. Every time I walked out the back door, I was struck by the sheer extravagance of them: giant blooms worthy of any flower arrangement right there, ready and waiting for me do whatever I wanted with them. It seemed like something from a beautiful novel, not at all my real life.

The garden was my sanctuary that summer because I was so dismayed and frustrated by the house. The house was dusty and dirty and smelled like someone else’s life. Paint was chipped and peeling and dingy; I could not make it all look clean to save my life and I could not afford to fix it all. So I stayed outside. And I identified and labeled all the plants. And I walked barefoot all the time, willing my very being to connect to this piece of land.

In late July, the limelight hydrangeas began to bloom. They were gorgeous— huge white flowers on hedges outside the back door and literal tree out by the garage. At first tinged with green, they became a pure white. From the window above the washing machine and dryer in our hall bathroom, I could appreciate the grand splendor of the the limelights. Extravagance. The absolute breathtaking generosity of the Creator.

Moving at midlife is so different from moving earlier in life. When we moved to our last house in Virginia, all my children were still under roof. We had barely crept into the teen years with the first one. I had a baby in my arms. Three more babies would be born there. I thought of it as my forever house, and I knew we’d settle in to stay a long, long time.

This new house (which is 250 years old) seemed very temporary right from the beginning. It is a physically demanding piece of property and Connecticut is unrelentingly expensive, so we had no illusions of staying “forever.” At times, I couldn’t really see the point in investing in something temporary. (Even though it’s all temporary, right?) That summer was melancholic, for sure. The big kids came, played for a weekend in the pool and on the porches and then left—off to their “real” lives. No longer was my house home base for their real lives. Even the college-aged ones kept “home” in Virginia.

This was the most unexpected thing of all. This was the reckoning that a certain stage— a long and beautiful stage—was over. I wasn’t a big family mom with a swinging door of my own children and their friends coming and going all the time. I wasn’t living out the legacy of many years invested in community building and watching babies—my own and others—grow. The recognition was abrupt. I didn’t see it coming. And I didn’t really know what to do with it. I liked my old life. There, I was living the life I knew I wanted to live. But here we were, far away from that, and I began to recognize that we’d made an irreversible decision.

I love Connecticut. I love my small town. I love inhaling the smell of this historic village. Our homeschool group is alive and my girls have such good friends. We are incredibly grateful for a lovely community of Catholics committed to raising families in faith. We have truly awesome neighbors. There’s a lot to like here if I just let go of my notions of what I thought life would look like when most of my kids were in their twenties, and if I stop worrying about what this abrupt shift means when they’re mostly in their thirties…

In late August, the limelights began to fade. Not fade exactly, but change. They began to turn a lovely shade of antiqued blush. I looked at them in wonder every single time I passed by. And that was all day every day. This beautiful rosy hue—my favorite color, really—this was what happened to the crisp, glorious flowers as they shifted to the new season. To be sure, they were most definitely heading into a harsh New England winter. They were on their way to dying. But first, they’d have an extended season of exquisite beauty, a season longer than their white season, in reality.

An extended season of exquisite beauty.

I’ll take it.

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