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Evenin’ all… I haven’t posted much the last few days. I think I’ve been trying to take a breath before Saturday when both Camp NaNoWriMo and the April A to Z Challenge start. Yes, you’re right. I was TOTALLY nuts to take on both in one month! I think I’m getting nervous!

But as I was standing in the kitchen tonight I had one of those epiphanies about child-rearing that I just wanted to journal about. And since most of my journaling is done on here these days, here I am!

When my mom passed away in 1998 I brought a plant home she had been nurturing in her craft room for a few years by then. She had gotten the “start” from her sister and flown from Ohio to Utah with that sucker in a plastic bag. But try as she might, she really couldn’t get the thing to be any way but long and stringy. I figured I knew the problem — not enough light, but my suggestions to her kind of fell on deaf ears.

When we cleaned out her house, I couldn’t bear to just toss it out. I figured it needed at least a CHANCE to get a good start. Nineteen years after her passing it now hangs in my east-facing kitchen, and it seems pretty dern happy wandering all over and wrapping itself around the plant hanger. I’ve had to trim it several times.

Then a year or so ago I asked my sister if she’d like to have one of mom’s plants. She said she’d love that. So when I trimmed it off the next time I stuck part of a vine in a vase in the window to let it take root. The plan was for Drollery to make another macrame plant hanger for me to hold the pot after I planted it. Unfortunately his lordship is a bit on the slow side, so here we are a year plus later and I’m still waiting for him to make that sucker.

I haven’t minded. I like having that little bit of greenery sitting in the window. It makes the kitchen feel alive. But tonight it dawned on me it had never sprouted any other shoots and I wondered why — until I took a close look at the vase. That root system is SO FREAKIN’ LARGE it’s wrapped round and round and round itself in that small vase effectively stunting its growth! It should have been planted LONG ago. And that’s when the epiphany hit me.

I’ve always marveled at the difference in the lives of my two kids. Stef is a real go-getter. You either get out of her way or you get run over! Bran, on the other hand, is a plodder to the point that he is almost paralyzed when it comes to making life choices. So why are they so different?

Well, despite the fact that we have raised Stef for most of her life, at age 7, that girl came ready-made with an independent streak! And that’s something Bran never got to experience because we were too busy overprotecting him since we knew he’d be our only child. What we did, in essence, was keep him root-bound. And even though he managed to get two college degrees and marry, he is still very much like that little plant sitting in my window.

The realization certainly gave me a different perspective on the direction of his life. I had to stop and ask myself if we were still keeping him in too small of a “container” with him living here with us, and I’m pretty sure the answer is yes… Not that there’s much we or he can do about right now, but if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go bug his lordship (who is sitting here next to me in his Archie Bunker chair reading the paper) and tell him about my epiphany. Maybe it’s time we tried to make at least SOME small changes to help get that guy “repotted!”

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