From a Seed, a Tree

Yom shlishi, 19 Sivan 5773.

I've neglected this little blog.  I think I'll try to give it a little water (and, no doubt, a bit of fertilizer), and a little TLC, and try to revive it.

I woke up this morning thinking: What exactly are we working toward, now that our kids are grown?

The nearly immediate answer: We're now in the phase of working toward healthy, happy and standing-on-their-own-four-feet married children.

I'm not sure that I thought about this phase much while I was bringing up my boys, except to say to them and anyone who'd listen that "I'm not raising sons.  I'm raising husbands."  And, of course, I acted on this philosophy, praising the qualities that I hoped my future daughters-in-law would love, and working assiduously to eradicate behaviors I thought would make my future daughters-in-law crazy.

So I didn't realize how pleasantly active this phase of their (and our) development would be.

We (the boys and I) converse a lot more now.  When they were small, it seemed I never shut up.  Talking, teaching, soothing, lecturing, cajoling, yelling, bargaining, repeating, repeating, repeating...  I often went to bed tired of my own voice.

Like a tap that won't stop dripping, once the wrench of maturity was applied, that torrent of my talk finally has slowed to a drip...      drip...               drip...                            drip...                             dr.......

Now I am privileged to listen more than talk, to applaud more than advise.  It is truly an honor to listen to the men (and husbands, or future husbands) they've become.  They have achieved so much wisdom!

I've never done well raising plants.  But I imagine that it must be very special to put a seed into earth, feed and water and tend it, and then just see it taking off, doing all of the growth you had imagined when you saw that picture on the Burpee's seed packet.  Or maybe this "raising crops of boys" is more like farming, after all. It's not just the watering and feeding, but the protecting of the little tender shoots throughout terrible storms, droughts, invasions by all manner of locusts or creeping things, doing everything in their power to devour the budding leaves and blossoms...

My boys came through so much, like any children, like any teenangels.  And (with a little guidance and protection from their father and me) they've made themselves into fine, sturdy, capable men.

I'm going to enjoy watching the trees grow taller and stronger.  I'm not quite ready to sit in their shade yet.  But I can see that it will be prodigious.