Failure to Bloom

A daughter’s undeclared war with her father

A portion of the unexpected garden refuse sits on the sun-scorched grass. Photo credit: Anneliese M. Bruner.

My daughter is in her forties and has lived apart from me several times over the years, but we have mostly lived together in the house where I raised her and her younger brother. Because their father is a surgeon, and we were married during the tough years of med school and residency, his unrelenting schedule dictated that, in practical terms, it was always just the three of us — the kids and me — like single motherhood. The divorce when their father and I turned 40 just formalized things.

He came by this past weekend to help our 37-year-old son cut the grass in the backyard in 85-degree weather. My son is visiting from California for a month to help me with death cleaning. Although I am not dying right now, I am determined to leave a cleaned-out house, so starting now feels right.

Instead of just cutting the grass as I asked, however, my 66-year-old ex-husband embarked on a project of major yard work against our son’s advice. He chopped down the Euonymus, cut back the Forsythia, and trimmed the Yew hedges, the same plants he grew up tending at his parents’ Long Island home. Oh, and he did mow the grass as well. When we moved here over 30 years ago, I was dismayed that he planted the same varieties of foliage he had grown up with, turning our yard into a knock-off of his parents’. Yard work…