Rosebushes

I want to chop down my rosebushes. I’m told I have to wait until midwinter to do it. I’m not sure exactly why but I think it has to do with them going into a less active, more hibernatory stage, and therefore being harmed less by being pruned. To be honest, I don’t really care.

I like roses, in their place. And to me, in their place means in someone else’s carefully cultivated garden. Like grapes, roses seem to require such meticulous cultivation. Painstaking pruning, constant vigilance, and work-intensive trellising. Unlike grapes, roses will stab you.

I did not plant these roses. They came with the house and every year, they take over. We cut them back and they take over again. Why not get rid of them, you ask? Probably for the same reason I do a lot of things: my children. My kids love them. They love eating rose petals in the summer. They love making bouquets of the flowers. They love the way the look and smell and even the way they seem to grow six feet every year.

It’s funny, the things we put up with for the people we love. Forrest and I were watching some old videos last night and we both remarked on how messy our house was. It was ridiculous. He and I have never been the most organized of people, but add in three kids in two years along with all the toys and clothes that entails, and every single surface of our house was covered. I used to feel bad about it. People would comment, remark on it, tell me they couldn’t imagine living in such a small house with so many kids. It hurt then, but now? It was a product of that time. Life was full. Full of work, full of fun, full of stuff. So we put up with it.

And as the kids aged, the stuff disappeared. The art supplies moved out to the garage, where secondhand tables make artists’ workspaces. The toys were traded for laptops and board games, which are both conveniently storable. And while the occasional pile of laundry does build up, there are no more diapers and extra onesies stashed around the house for easy changes. (You forget how you really can’t leave them alone in a room, even if their sibling needs a change. So you learn to stash diapers everywhere, I guess.)

Those roses have been there since the beginning. And even though my kids have had their run-ins with the thorns, every time I talk about pulling them out, they protest. “How could you even think about getting rid of them?” Those roses have been used in a hundred mud pies and secret potions and flower crowns. How could I even think about getting rid of them?

And so, the roses stay. We’ll be cutting them down, of course, pruning them brutally, but roses, contrary plants that they are, like that sort of thing. They’ll grow back again and again and I wonder if, even after my kids are grown and flown, I’ll keep those rosebushes. Just in case they’re home and want to make another bouquet for my kitchen table.