On Saving Up: A Gypsy Heart and Blue Hydrangeas

Saturday morning at the grocery store, as I was meandering to the checkout lane, I lingered at the rows and rows of gorgeous flower bouquets. I love flowers and have so many fond memories associated with them.  Growing up, my mom and I took walks when the weather was warm and the trees had blossomed.  She always picked a bloom, brought it right up to her nose, closed her eyes, and drank in the aroma.  In the springtime, she called me Petunia. She taught me how to break apart the tightly packed flats before planting them in the soil.

Flowers make me feel safe, loved, and beautiful.

When I saw these vibrant bouquets at the grocery store, I wanted so badly to buy some for my apartment – but I kept hesitating.  I was waiting for something.

I’m 24 years old and, to the outside observer, my life seems a bit….  Well…. Unsettled. 

This fall, I will begin graduate school in voice performance to earn a degree that provides very little job security.  I am single – no boyfriends, lovers, or fiancés to speak of.  I’m certainly not living the life I had planned or expected – though I have tried to embrace its funny messiness.  

In college, I loved the idea of a “nomadic” existence.  This blog’s namesake is an allusion to Tennyson’s "Ulysses."  When I read this poem at age twenty, my heart sang a similar tune: an insatiable hunger for wild and wonderful adventure.

            “Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die…

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

I related perfectly to Ulysses – his curiosity and thirst for life.  I understood his unquenchable thirst for experience, knowledge, and purpose.  I wanted nothing more than to dance through life carefree and unattached.

But something happened last year.  I began to see that my gypsy heart desired more than endless adventure and movement.  What I really wanted was a Place to plant roots, a Place with People, a Place to invest. A Place to call Mine.

I took inventory of my surroundings.  I didn’t see a husband or a prestigious career or a house with a picket fence, baby blue shutters, and a bright red Kitchen Aid Mixer. 

But what I did see was this:

I saw my rock star aunt who is having her final chemotherapy treatment next week.  I saw my roommate, who lost her car keys in our neighbor’s bathroom Sunday night at 11:00PM.  I saw my parents sitting across from me at the dinner table, listening, lecturing, glowing.  I saw a group of beautiful women, who have been Jesus to me these past three months.  I saw mentors, musicians, bosses, coworkers, and students.  I saw a life.

I realized at the grocery store, in front of the sweetest bunch of blue hydrangeas, that I had been waiting to start my “real” life.  I had been saving up my ideas, music, words, recipes, love, time, dreams, and flowers for when I would arrive at some tangible, settled place called “real life.” In the throws of my twenty-somethings, I had forgotten that my real life is happening. Right now.

It might not be what I expected, but it is every bit as real.

At the grocery store that morning, I felt like maybe God gifted me with this assurance:

This is it, baby girl! This is my Plan A for you. This is the life I’ve given you right now. Now go and live it!

 And so I bought the blue hydrangeas.