In early June, the garden was miraculous. This was the time of year that Jude—finally—could take a moment to sit back and enjoy the hard work she’d done. Everywhere she looked, she saw the rewards of her careful planning and judicious pruning. The beds were a riot of glorious color, with sugary pink saucer-sized roses, ruffled yellow peonies, spiked purple delphinium. The deep green English boxwood she’d taken such time with was well on its way to becoming the bones of the garden. Above it all, a lotus tree was in full golden bloom; it looked like a Monet painting, just slightly out of focus, against the vibrant blue sky.
She could see how it was all coming together, growing in. Soon, maybe even next year, she would be ready to reveal her pride and joy to the garden-tour attendees.
She peeled off her dirty gloves and got to her feet. The heady scent of roses captured her, made her stand there a moment longer than she’d intended. There was such peace for her here. Every plant, every flower, every shrub was placed according to her plan. If she didn’t like the way something grew or spread or bloomed, she yanked it out and replaced it. She was the Red Queen of this realm, in complete control, and, as such, she was never disappointed.
But there was more to her current sense of well-being than that. She hadn’t realized until the twins got accepted to USC how tense she’d been throughout senior year, how stressed out. She’d worried endlessly about the kids and for them. She’d worried that one or the other would miss a deadline or make an irreparable mistake or that they wouldn’t have the chance to go to college together. Now, she could sleep again, and, amazingly, she was excited for them to leave home. Oh, she was still anxious about them, still concerned about the emptiness of her nest, but spring had lightened more than a gloomy sky; it had lightened her way. She could glimpse a new future for herself, a time when she could be the captain of her own journey. If she wanted to go back to school for landscape architecture, she could; if she wanted to open a garden accessories store, she could. And if she wanted to simply sit on a lawn chair for the whole summer, reading the classics she’d missed, she could do that, too. Hell, she could spend a summer reading comic books if she wanted to.
The thought was liberating and a little scary.
She glanced down at her watch. It was nearing three o’clock, which meant that the kids would be home from school any minute. If the pattern from the past month held, they’d come home in a swarm of seniors, all of whom seemed to be on a mild form of crack. That was what pseudo adulthood and impending graduation had done to the kids. They’d become amped up, superemotional versions of themselves. The boys laughed too hard sometimes; girls became maudlin at the drop of a hat, burst into tears over a bad hair day.