Daisies

I took a picture the other day of a pair of brightly perfect pink Gerbera daisies is a turquoise vase. I liked it so well I set it as my Facebook profile picture. But tonight, instead of sleeping, I lay awake in my bed thinking about how unlike the pink Gerberas I am and I think the photo will have to be changed. Granted the World Wide Web is all about false advertising, but there is just something unsettling untrue about the Gerbera as it hangs to the left of the things I post in cyberspace. I can’t relate to the perfect pinkness or the silky petals. I can’t pretend I wear clean clothes every day. In fact, I can’t even make it to a second cup of coffee without realizing my total inability to parent the sticky little people that swarm, hover and sometimes sting each other around my knees. So I think the picture will have to go.

I think I will try thinking of myself as a handful of green olives, subdued and melancholy with a flavor that can’t be appreciated until adulthood. Olives have pits so you have to be gentle when you eat them, lest they chip a tooth. They live in a briny jar that can keep them fresh almost forever. Yes. I think I want to be an olive. Olives give me hope that someday the eldest will look back fondly and see that I was so wise and helpful all these years.



Tomorrow I think I will offer one to Mister just for the shear satisfaction of watching him turn up his nose and tell me how things that are green make him cough and pitch his head forward in a way that is not his fault. I will remember that my job is not always supposed to be fun. I will remember that these children have been given to me for a season to love, cherish and grow, which it turns out makes me hot, tired and mad. And then I will eat a small bowl of olives and let the briny juice run down my fingers, thinking about how good things get better with age.