A Blooming Sort of Life

My favorite flowers are zinnias. Today, they are, anyway. Tomorrow they might be camellias. Or magnolia blossoms. Can't really say.
But today, like I said, it's the zinnias which are still blooming in my garden- the only thing left from summer's planting. The tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans, cucumbers and squash are all gone. The volunteer watermelon that made the sweetest, reddest fruit I ever ate is history but you can bet I saved some seeds. A few weeks ago, my husband and I spent a good two days, pulling up weeds and dead plants and hauling them all next door to throw over the fence to the neighbor's grateful goats, but we left the zinnias because they were still blooming.
I like these flowers because they come in what I call crayon colors. Bright reds, yellows, oranges, purples, lavenders, pinks. And they cut well and look right joyful in a vase. They're a hardy plant to grow and the butterflies love them, which is a beautiful thing to see- the colorful winged flowers that butterflies remind me of, drifting and settling on the stationary ones. A tiny bit of paradise right here for my own eyes.
My life has recently been a little bit like a bouquet of zinnias. Quite colorful and profusely blooming. In the last week I've been in four performances of Casablanca, had two sets of overnight guests and last night I threw a little family birthday party for my 22-year old daughter. Her birthday is today and I remember the day she was born like it was yesterday. Of course.
It was one of those suddenly-chilly late September days, with that blue sky that makes all the other skies jealous. I had a score of friends in the house to help me birth her and although it was my shortest labor- a mere 15 hours or so, it was the hardest. She weighed over ten pounds and had her little hand up by her head. After a very long period of pushing, I managed to get her head out and then her shoulders got stuck. This is a life-threatening situation called shoulder dystocia but my midwife kept her head and turned me over to my hands and knees (try doing that with a baby sticking out of you) and out she came.
Yeah. That was a hard, wonderful day.
Anyway, we celebrated her birth and life last night with chicken flautas and chocolate cake. All her siblings were here and her daddy and grandma and fiance and best friend, too. Today I'm going to take her out to buy a wedding dress and have some lunch. It's going to be a big year for that girl and the whole family as well.
So between company and play performances and birthday celebrations, I haven't had much time to myself which is something I seem to need a great deal of. I'm not suffering or anything- it's been a beautiful week made up of many bright colors and lots of love- but I'm about ready to settle back into real life.
We finish up the play's run this weekend with a rehearsal tonight, and performances on Friday and Saturday and then we tear-down and have a little cast party on Sunday. I sure am going to miss it, that rush of nerves and magic that happens when the lights go down; the velvet, the jewels, the sparkle and shine. Mostly, though, the people. I don't really socialize very much, so it's a real novelty for me to have lots of different people to talk to, to interact with, to act with, to play with and I have enjoyed it tremendously.
But I'm looking forward to being able to write daily again, to exercise more regularly, to spend more time with my husband, to get the fall garden in.
I guess my usual life is less like a bouquet of zinnias and more like a bouquet of lovely, dusty pink roses- less spectacular, more consistent as to color, but sweet and mighty nice.
It's good to change things up now and then. Lord knows that things are going to change, for good and for bad, no matter what we do, but it's nice to think that we can make the choices for ourselves sometimes.
And for now, I'm still enjoying the zinnias. Me and the butterflies. There's plenty to share.