How to Survive Beauty and Grief at Once

You just have to go right through the middle of it: the Philadelphia Flower Show, missing my parents, and teenagers (plus a bonus gardener with a lovely British accent).

I bought myself a garden frog on Friday. It’s one of those little decorations that’s supposed to go outside on a patio table or in your flowerbed to add a little whimsy, but it currently resides on my kitchen counter, right beside the sink. It is just a garden frog that’s been stuffed with a fern, yet it makes me so very happy. I brought it home that day like I’d just adopted a pet and showed it to the kids with such glee, and Quinn looked at it and said, “Well, I mean. It’s, um, something. But where are you going to, you know, put it?”

I don’t know where I’ll put it. But I do know that the silly little thing makes me grin every time I walk by it, and there’s a reason why.

* * * * *

I took myself to the Philadelphia Flower Show on Friday and spent hours immersed in more beauty than my little eyeballs could handle. There were waterfalls of flowers. There were waterfalls of raindrops over beds of flowers. There was even a waterfall that was an actual waterfall. There were animals made out of flowers and clouds made out of flowers and and entire cottage scenes and backyard patio scenes and forest scenes and meadow scenes made out of—you guessed it!—flowers (and grasses and trees and herbs and barks…but mainly flowers).

Even the other attendees were dressed in flowers. I think I people-watched as much as I gaped at the displays: at the social media influencers in their floral dresses and the groups of perfectly styled women in their flowing blouses tucked into cute jeans and the dapper young men dressed to the absolute nines in their pink blazers and fedoras. This suburban mom who was about to spend the entire weekend in a sweatshirt and sneakers at Sports Events and who has not lived in a city in 20 years was head over heels at the sight of all the cool city people in their cool city clothes. There were so many moments where I wanted to turn to someone and say, “Did you see that?!” but I couldn’t. Because I’d chosen to come by myself. Which normally is something I am perfectly happy doing, but Friday? Not so much Friday—Friday, in fact, was kind of hard.

Because here’s the thing: when you’re staring at a giant tea party tableau filled with even bigger woodland creatures that have been styled completely out of flowers and there is a posing influencer in pale blue 4-inch stilettos and a giant sunhat blocking your photo of the giant bark-covered turtle, well. Sometimes you just want to be able to turn to the person next to you and go, “What the hell is happening right now??” And you can’t do that with a stranger. They look at you funny.

The flower show was absolutely an event that, in another lifetime (well, seven years ago), my mom would have attended with me. This kind of thing was our jam. And I got sucker-punched by grief on Friday, about 20 minutes into my drive as I was moving along quite happily over the bridge past Harrisburg and on my way to the show. And I didn’t really want to carry it around with me, this heavy heart and the ghost of my mom sitting beside me in the car, coffees at our sides and chatting all the way down the turnpike, but grief has a stubborn way of staying put until it’s acknowledged.

So I did the day just like the two of us would have if we’d been together. I took my time driving down the Center City streets, then walked for a while around the city. I unabashedly took photos of all the once-familiar places: City Hall, for instance, and the Suburban Station building, where I had my very first job out of college, editing for American Lawyer Media. I spent a few happy hours wandering the show at the convention center, and I window-shopped plants and seeds and handmade jewelry. I sat in on a talk about flowers given by a master gardener who was named Jenny Rose Carey and wore a silk scarf and spoke with such a lovely English accent she made the words “pollinators” and “inflorescence” sound like the notes of a lullaby. And because my mom would insist on it, I stopped on my way out of town for a late lunch in an airy restaurant with big windows that looked out onto a blue-skied day. I ate by myself and paged through my new gardening book and missed, terribly, the company of the woman who made every day trip like this more sparkly, more fun, more of an adventure.

I missed her—and as it always goes, my dad—so very much. Missing my parents lately has become a dull ache rather than the stabbing sort of pain that would continuously hit for the first few years after they each died. I’ve had to quell the moments of sadness this year when I missed them sharply—I’ve gotten good at just stuffing the feelings down, because I really don’t have any other choice and also I don’t quite like to get teary in public—but it still swells up all the time in tiny moments, too, like when Saoirse tries a new food Dad would love, or when I want to ask Mom something, or I can’t remember a random piece of family lore that only she would remember. I still miss our afternoon phone calls, and lately, there’s so much advice I need from her.

Was I like this as a teen? Completely snippy and awful and kind of mean one second and then needing reassurance and love and being completely level-headed the absolute next?

What do I do when they get their hearts broken?

What do I do when they break someone else’s?

Is it normal to have to repeat the same basic directions over and over again every single day—like emptying their lunch bags or picking their socks up off the bathroom floor—or am I doing something wrong?

Do you hear his cough? Do you think it’s just allergies or should I take him to the doctor?

Am I doing this right?

I told my mom when she was sick that I needed her to stick around until at least the kids were teenagers. I tried to sound lighthearted, but I was dead serious. She told me I would be fine. But she was wrong.

I need them both around. I need the wise, easy, funny mom-level companionship that only she could give. I need my dad around to cook with and order in sushi for and embarrass us all with his bragging—loudly, and in public—about the kids. I need Quinn to stand next to him so I have the proof of how closely she takes after him. And I need my mom to walk around a flower show with me and, when I spot a silly little frog planter, I want to have her pluck it out of my hands to pay for it herself, not because I need her to, but because that’s what she always did and it’s what I do now for my children and their friends, and I want to feel again what it felt like to be loved that way, to know she’s there with me.

* * * * *

My dad was freshly retired from the naval supply depot here in PA when David and I got married, and offered to apartment-sit for us while we were on our honeymoon. He, by all accounts, had a fantastic week. He spoiled my cat and read lots of books, but—a comfortably solo traveler like myself—he also spent his days exploring everything Baltimore had to offer within walking distance: the little flower gardens along Charles Street in Mt. Vernon, the food stalls at Lexington Market, the exhibits at the Walters Art Museum. And it was from the art museum shop he brought me two little gifts: a tiny ceramic turtle, which would set the tone for David and I collecting little handcrafted turtles we’d find on our earliest trips together, and an equally miniature ceramic frog. I think they were meant to sit in potted plants as a decoration, but they made their way from apartment windowsills to a townhouse kitchenette and then to our home bookcases. Somewhere along the way I lost the turtle and the tiny frog lost a foot, but 22 years later he sits on a bookshelf in my office, a reminder that love travels more slowly than time.

* * * * *

I went to the flower show because I wanted to. I made it through a bad grief day because I had to.

And now, a silly little garden frog with a fern sticking out of its back looks up at me from the kitchen counter with a happy smirk. It’s a reminder of my dad’s smile, and his bear hugs, how he would call me “Precious” even though I absolutely hated the name (“Don’t call me Precious!”) and am almost certain I at no time carried myself in a manner that justified the moniker.

We were all so young when they died. They and I had survived my adolescence and young adulthood together, and they were supposed to be here to witness this next round. Now I have the frogs. I have the ghosts.

My mom told me I’d be fine.

She just didn’t say when.

* * * * *