Category — life goes on

Blossoms, for all their intricate beauty, are fruitless without pollination. Their purpose is to attract bees, birds, and butterflies to send and receive their magic fairy dust, the secret code that unlocks fruit and seed production. Fertilized or barren, the spent blossoms flutter from their stems after a short and exquisite show; the legacy of the plant relies on fruition.

Only pollen with enough genetic variety to produce healthy offspring will result in reproduction, which is why most plants require cross-pollination. Fruit borne of their own pollen alone would produce weak stock, vulnerable to blight and sterility, so a molecular defense exists to encourage only successful genetic combinations.

At breakfast the other morning, Wendy pointed out a forsythia bush on the edge of the parking lot. It was covered in half-open blossoms, spent before they could unfurl. I wept for it later, the poor sweet thing, doing its humble best to send fairy dust into the world, expending all that effort and energy desperately pushing flowers into a dormant, barren landscape. Tricked by unseasonably warm temperatures into performing for empty rows of hard metal seats, with nary a honeybee to carry its whisper, and only silence on its carpels.

Nature, for all her exquisite wisdom, delivers such cruelly objective consequences for her creatures’ timing errors. When the blooms open at just the right time, a pollinator that favors that plant and its best genetic crosses will visit just long enough to dance the timeless waltz of creation on its petals, leaving dreams and carrying wishes away on their furry legs and antennae.

The promise of fruit is made that very moment; if the plant is given enough sunshine, water and fresh air but is left otherwise undisturbed, the next generation will push forth from the stems, sent from deep within the all roots and veins, cell by cell, to make new life in the soil below.

The forsythia will most surely find itself frostbitten, frozen over, flowers encased in a coat of icy shards that will cut them to shreds upon thawing, leaving a pile of rotted mush to seep into its roots, inevitably restarting the cycle of life, birth and hope under the ground. Another chance to get it right.

My heart ached to impart some comfort, to reassure it that the secret workings of the universe are as impersonal as gravity: when the season and conditions are right the magical becomes the inevitable, the soil is richened for its failed effort, time and wisdom produce fruit sweetened by experience and patience. Gratitude for its timely reminder seeped from the marrow of my stiff and tired hips: buds and berries set on their own time, in their own way, thriving on a lack of human interference in the magic of nature.

It will have learn on its own the difference between January and March, and the futility of blooming at the first signs of warmth instead of having enough faith to wait for spring, that opening is just a start. In its struggle, it will discover that the beauty of its blossoms are just a vessel for its essence, which lays in wait for that familiar ancient whisper to awaken it to fruition.

I smiled as I wiped the tears from my cheeks, though, because I know the joy of mastering those lessons: an entire existence dripping with life and sustenance from every stem and branch, with roots enough to anchor and nourish, and wishes given flight on the wings of bees.

When not inspired by one story or experience, my writing is usually prompted by a recurring pattern or subject that appears in unrelated places. In this case, I stalled quite a bit and had to be heavily provoked by the universe. Somewhere between the bazillionth unsolicited suggestion that I play hard to get, and an article firmly declaring Meg Ryan movies responsible for the corrosion of family culture, this post was born.

While I excel at feigning coyness, I’m completely incapable of playing hard to get, and furthermore, it seems an awfully unstable foundation to begin anything. At what point does one stop attempting to engender behavior and begin to evaluate behavior? I don’t want to know what I can trick a man into, I’m trying to find out what he’s inspired to. The latter is sustainable, and the former is an exhausting way to live.

A better plan: actually being hard to get. Ideally, just hard to keep, but that’s akin to walking a tightrope. This is the point where one suggests having a full, rich life- accurate but worthless advice to the overly eager. The only cure for desperation is an abundant dose of one’s own medicine. When another human being slowly tightens the noose of pressure and expectation around your windpipe just because you were nearby, had the appropriate organs and an assortment of vague redeeming qualities? That will do it.

Strategy is all about power plays and control games, and if I’ve learned a thing about love relationships, it is that one ought not search for a worthy opponent. In exchange for being straightforward and direct, I expect my boundaries to be honored, and breaches or passive-aggression are red flags of disrespect.

Ideally, I’d like to share my life with someone who actually wants to work together towards a shared vision. I still have mountains to climb in my creative and professional life, my moderate chronic wanderlust occasionally flares to ragingly acute. Being expected to concede my interests to someone else’s agenda fills me with a woozy panic that makes my chest tight and my tongue sharp. Better that he has goals and interests and friends and things too, so that he doesn’t feel betrayed by my need for solitude and the frequent impromptu adventure. This leaves a very nice space for everyone to breathe and grow.

It also makes me sound very strong and independent, which I absolutely am, for a girl…

I require a certain standard of care before I’ll invest trust. Because I’m a delicious little piece of psycho pie, the loving gets in front of the trusting sometimes, and I respond very poorly to the risk exposure. It makes me hyper-vigilant; just like the corporate executives that called every hour on the hour for income statement estimates after a particularly fruitful or trying month. Except that I know (usually) that the hyper-vigilance hurts the cause, so I withdraw to keep my fruity filling hidden. I want to see what happens without my interference, which is likely to be heavy-handed from that mindset, anyway.

So when Harry races through the streets of New York to tell Sally he loves her, when Big finds Carrie in Paris and whispers “you’re the one, you were always the one”, I’m both disgusted and delighted.

Furthering the fantasy that an emotionally unavailable man is going to suddenly open like a lotus flower and pull your sweet ass into the blinding white light of eternal happiness is just pointless and cruel. I’m of the school of thought that no man is emotionally unavailable, really, they are just not emotionally available to you. Watch the right woman come along- they drop like flies. I’ve seen the mightiest bachelors melt like warm molasses before my very eyes.

Still, what gives me sillygirlheart about the dramatic reunion isn’t new year’s eve tuxedoes or romantic speeches, it isn’t the pink fluffy skirt or the streets of Paris. It’s that unequivocal surrender, the admission that even though love is messy and challenging, they can’t imagine a life without the other person in it.

Those moments don’t usually come in dramatic fashion. They slip in under the door, or through an open window, and settle gently over the bed like an extra blanket. You don’t notice it as much as you notice yourself stretching out in the newfound warmth, and suddenly that twinge of stiffness in your leg puts a smile on your face as you remember why you’re so cozy.

The world is so big now; the economic model that kept men, women and marriages small is so much dust. Chris Ryan speaks of “facing the sky” in Sex at Dawn, that phase in a relationship when you find yourself halfway around the ferris wheel, recommending that couples negotiate boundaries and rules through honest discussion and mutual respect. His context is monogamy and traditional marriage, but its usefulness far exceeds that single aspect of relationships.

The most imperative quality in a partner and a relationship is the willingness to live and grow together, to carve out a bond that gives two people security and freedom. Someone who sees life and love as a constant process of facing the sky, over and over again, who senses commitment as a beginning instead of an ending.

Happy endings make lovely fairy tales for little girls, but I want a happy beginning.