Passages

Dried-out, dehydrated… beauty and life suspended in time. I stopped, mid-grab, struck by the dramatic elegance in the spent life of my tulips that had so beautifully brought Easter’s Spring verve and color to my table. Someone told me that cut tulips continue to grow after they are put in water. For 10 days mine grew, flourished and became a completed, and surprising, metaphor for us women as we age. The pert uprightness of youth’s perfection- fresh, eager, bright of color, enthusiastic for a life yet to be lived. The full-blown middle years- dynamic, active and fun, pure colors; a time to acquire amidst the tumult of growing kids and careers building toward the ‘future.’ The flower straightens into the elegant age of accrued experience, satisfied contentment and gratification in the journey traveled thus far; still looking forward… yet, bending toward the light, ever so slightly at first, as the fulcrum of life is now full of memories already made and tightening in on the time left to make them. As the petals twist, dry, and wither, on close examination the tulip is at its most beautiful- colors so deep, rich and unique they defy an artist’s replication, petals of delicately transparent gossamer bowing into the full bend of age. Grown children, grandchildren, many years lived- joy and pain, life and death, hope in what we cannot see. Even now, as a petal drops, its elegance carries the transcendence of experience and wisdom, and a life well lived and loved.