Tending Roses

If you know me, you'll know that I relish any opportunity to read a good book. It will follow me around like a faithful little companion (often propped up as I dry my hair, wash dishes, and eat lunches) and wisk me into other worlds and away from my own troubles and cares for a time. After my forays into the lives of others, I find myself renewed and more able to face my own fears, slay my own dragons, tend my own roses. I just finished reading a wonderful book. It true nerdly fashion, I had to do a book report! The book is Tending Roses by Lisa Wingate. Apparently it's the first in a series I now intend to read.



Tending Roses is a beautiful story about a young couple, Kate and Ben, struggling to keep it together. They're given the task of watching Grandma Rose (a strong-willed octogenarian who is going senile and becoming a danger to herself) for a little while until the rest of the family can get there to take her away to a nursing home. In the process, however, Katie (through a series of letters her grandmother writes to her) comes to find herself and the purpose she wants for her life. I found so much of the story poignant, touching, and very uplifting.

Check out this letter from Grandma Rose to see what I mean. . .

"Once, a poor hired lady came with a bouquet of roses and wildflowers clasped in her hands. She told me that her children had sneaked into my garden and picked them for her, and that they would be punished. I bade her not to scold the children, for I was proud to give them this gift. She smiled, and thanked me, and told me that, with so many children, she had no time for tending roses.

I did not understand her words until my own children were born. When the first was a babe, I took her outside and let her play in an empty wash barrel so I could have time for tending my roses. I was often cross with her cries while I was at my work. As she grew, and as my second child was born, I understood what the hired lady had told me - that motherhood leaves no time for selfish pleasures. Only time for tending others.

My roses grew wild and died as I busied myself with feeding and diapering, nursery rhymes and sickbeds. I missed those bright blooms that had been mine and felt it unfair that I must leave my hard work there to die. But I did not think of it overmuch. My mind and heart were occupied with the sorrows and joys of motherhood.

The day came, it seemed in no time, when my children were grown and gone, and I again found time to tend the roses. I could labor over them from dawn until dusk with no children to feed, no husband needing meals, and few passersby on the old road. My flowers have come thick and full and beautiful again. From time to time, I see neighbor children come to pick them when I am silent in my house. I close my eyes and listen to their laughter, and think that the best times of my life, the times that passed by me the most quickly, were the times when the roses grew wild."

Also, for a first chapter excerpt of the book, go here.