Today I’m sharing an unedited excerpt from the first draft of my current work in progress. (Yikes!) In case you haven’t been following, this book is a how-to, how-not-to, comedic insight into what it’s like to be a partner to a medical professional in training. As the days have been getting hotter, the sunshine has also brought out a few blooms on our love bush, which has played a pretty significant part in our journey. I hope you like the story!
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On my birthday that year, March 2018, Rhett bought me roses. But not like any other husband buys roses. Oh, no. He bought me a dinky little potted rose bush with dinky little red roses on it. Roses the size of a snack-sized Oreo, whose stems were still attached to each other, and buried in dirt.
I remember him walking into the house with a goofy grin on his face, the same goofy grin he always wears when he gets me a gift. I grinned and waited impatiently for him to proudly reveal what he had behind his back. Not a vase, a green plastic container from the garden section of Walmart. No long-stems, just squatty, thorny branches. I’m kind of ashamed to say I think I laughed at him.
“You don’t like them?” He asked.
“Of course I do. I love them!” I said honestly. “But leave it to you to get me a rose bush instead of cut roses.” I know, I sound like a jerk. Just wait, it gets worse.
“Flowers in a vase just die. These will make you happy longer!”
Yep, worst wife ever. But in my defense, I didn’t blame him for getting me a bush. By that point in our marriage, I knew his ways. They were similar to mine. We were both too frugal, too allergic to financial waste, to spend money on things that didn’t last. Which was the reason he rarely got me flowers, and the reason I was okay with that. So I laughed because it was a clever loop hole, not because I resented the gift.
Unfortunately, as we learned quickly, I skipped the line in Heaven when they handed out green thumbs. The flowers that were meant to keep me happy forever, were almost dead when Rhett intervened.
“We need to plant these.”
“Where?”
“Right outside next to those bushes!”
He was referring to the landscaping the landlord kept meticulously trimmed. If we planted the flowers there, I was scared for their fate and ours. But as I have been so lucky to experience so many times in our marriage (and often fought against viciously), Rhett was never good at following rules. So he planted the flowers, and they thrived. They thrived up until the day I thought we would have to say goodbye to them to find our new home.
“No way,” Rhett said. “We’re taking our love bush to California.”
And he did. For ten days that little rose bush, in its tiny plot of stolen Hershey dirt, traveled across the country in a Toyota Corolla. It bonded with its family members, saw the sights, hid from the sun, baked in the heat, and lived to tell the tale. We planted it in front of our tiny California apartment and waited, hoping one day its branches would turn a little bit more of a normal shade of green.
They did. We didn’t see any roses that first year, but it turned green again. And it lived through another transfer when we took it to our new house a year later, and planted it in the front yard. It was tiny compared to all of the other plants left behind by the previous tenants and the hyperactive HOA, but it meant so much more.
Six months after we moved to that house I saw something amazing.
“Our love bush is growing a rose!” I told Rhett. And sure enough, that little rose bud opened up to greet us right in the middle of our sleepless nights after we had our second baby. When the whole world was collapsing under the pressure of second year of residency mixed with baby’s first year from hell, that rose bush reminded us that time passes, but some things are constant. Some things do, like we hoped we would, withstand the tests of time.
Several months later, a few more buds sprouted around that first flower. A total of six buds were forming, when our little crawling one year old took interest in the plant and snatched off two of them. Dead in the dirt, traumatized by the image of her joyous smile, those buds remained a part of the plant that was, as ever, symbolic of mine and Rhett’s relationship. Tattered by the existence of our needy, ever-present children, but alive and beautiful despite all obstacles. Because of these obstacles.
A love bush. Figure out what yours is, and hold onto it. That reminder will get you through a lot.
