Purple Pansies and Life in General

For my birthday in late April, my childhood friend Beth gave me a large bowl full of purple pansies. They were flourishing, bright, and abundant when I placed the container on my front steps with a bit of skepticism about my ability to keep them alive through the summer. I’m happy to report that the pansies continue to thrive and add a dash of color to my front steps. And they are the most resilient bunch of flowers I’ve ever had. Through this long, simmering summer I came home some evenings to find the pansies wilted and slumped over, and then after watering them, the next morning they were seriously revived and ready to take on another hot day. This happened many times throughout July and August, and now into September. I’ve really come to admire these pansies for their tenacity and ability recover. They are hardy, to say the least.
A couple of weeks ago at Price Chopper, I had to walk by a large display of mums for sale; then inside there was a full display of Halloween candy. Two foreboding signs I always dread. I don’t like mums for a few reasons. First, they are always a sign of fall, which means we are collectively saying that summer is ending. I struggle with summer ending. Secondly, they seem stiff to me. They’re not like willowy poppies, or delicate peonies, or cheerful like purple pansies. And for some reason mums sometimes come in rust color. What is the point of a brown flower?
As for Halloween candy being on store shelves in mid-August, a full two and-a-half months before Halloween, I just don’t get it. Why are we not happy to linger in the moment for these too-few summer months that we wait for so patiently, after shoveling snow and leaving for work in the dark for five months or so? I understand fully that it’s the kings of capitalism, providing for their loyal subjects, knowing the longer something is on the market, the more of it they will sell. So the Thanksgiving decorations and pumpkin spice-everything will be available well before Halloween, and the Christmas cards won’t be long after that.
We don’t seem to mind being rushed through the year, but I worry that we’re also being rushed through life a bit. It’s as if I’m being told to put away my pansies, get some mums, and move along into the holiday season. Which also means parents are being told to get on with the back-to-school clothes shopping in July and get ready to move your child along into the next grade. We all know how rapidly years pass once kids are in school. Those first-day-of-school photos seem to pile up quickly.
There’s been a baby boom in my extended family recently. Three new babies in three weeks in July, in addition to the three kids we already love. Another little one is due in January and sometime before the end of this year, my own grandson, being adopted from Thailand, will join us. I’m watching the next generation become parents, nurture babies, deal with toddlers, and juggle careers and families, all while my siblings and cousins and I talk about retirement plans and where we want to live for the last decades of our lives. Life moves along at a pace that continues to pick up speed. It seems we were just working on the third grade Lancaster town history projects and then considering college choices in my own house. As I watch my daughters, nieces and nephews navigate their own 30s and 40s, and the children and careers that go along with these decades, I find myself silently giving them advice to take it all in greedily and savor it, because it goes by so fast. I offer the advice silently because I know when I had three kids under three, I was so hoping for the day when no one would cry and wanting to leapfrog over however many months it took to get to that day. Of course, eventually that day arrived, but I don’t think I even noticed. By that time I was likely hoping for the day when I wouldn’t have to change any diapers, or the day all three girls would be in school so I’d have a few hours to myself. In the thick of it, the noisy, hectic, tiring mess of it all, no one should be told: “Don’t wish these days away because you’ll miss them. Trust me. I know.” As much as you know it, it’s not helpful to say it.
And at the same time I do want them to savor it, somehow. Just like I want to savor summer and before moving reluctantly into fall. The leaves will turn and scatter. I’ll need to get my shovel out of the back of the garage and find my scraper somewhere in the trunk of my car. The kids will grow. The parents will be tired. There will be joy and there will be struggles in each year, likely in each day. But let’s not rush it or wish it away. Buy the Halloween candy at the end of October and wait on the Valentine’s Day cards until February. And I’m keeping my hardy pansies on the front steps until they are covered in snow.