What tulips represent for me and my family.
For the past 25 years, there’s a moment when I’m simultaneously reminded of the beauty of nature and the passage of time. It’s when the Park Avenue tulips pop up. In some ways, it’s like Christmas in April. I stare at the square patch of soil on every corner, waiting for their long slender leaves to emerge, anticipating the moment they will fill the avenue with a burst of color — sometimes yellow, sometimes red, sometimes a deep pink the color of my favorite lipstick in the 90s. This year they are pink and white…a perfect complement to the cherry blossoms they sandwich on the medium. I smile as they sway in the breeze and bask in the sun, and fret when it gets too chilly or rains, worried that the petals will fall and leave the pistils naked and lonely.
After Ellie, Carrie, and I moved into Park Avenue, when they were seven and three respectively, we started to take photos in front of the Park Avenue Tulips. The girls became less cooperative as they entered adolescence, mortified that I made them put on a dress and was making a fuss — God forbid they see someone they know in the middle of our photoshoot. After they headed to college, I’d look wistfully at the tulips and even tried to get Ellie to take the train down from New Haven, but they’d clearly permanently crossed this annual rite of passage off their list.
I always imagined that I would frame each tulip photo and display them somewhere chronologically. Unfortunately, they are still in boxes in my basement. Because of their seasonal appearance, they always remind me of Mother’s Day and for the last few years, how quickly the years of hands-on mothering flew by.
My favorite Mother’s Days involve the gift of time. One photo reminds me of the time Jay and Ellie took me to brunch. Ellie must have been four — Carrie hadn’t been born yet — and I was just back from Ireland for a remote episode with the TODAY Show. It must have been a chilly Sunday. Ellie was wearing a kilt and a cape I’d bought her, a bright green tartan plaid that I kept so she could potentially pass it on to a future daughter.
After Jay died, Mother’s Day became the three of us — walking around the reservoir, breakfast in bed, certificates for back scratches that were never redeemed. During the pandemic, Carrie and Adriana, my assistant who shacked up with us to “wait it out” for several months, created the “Fallopia Spa” at my house in the Hamptons, where I was treated to a facial and a massage, breakfast in bed, and even a dinner of Ina Garten’s roasted chicken and lava cake. (They wore uniforms consisting of white jeans and white collared shirts). It was hilarious.
This Mother’s Day, I hope Ellie flies in to surprise me, so she and Carrie can treat me like the Goddess I am. (I’m being funny.) If not, I am going to mosey up Park Avenue, stop to smell the tulips, and remember.
