What Is the Color of Your Hydrangeas?

When I lived in New York, hydrangeas were my garden’s colorful powder puffs. Their large round blooms appeared early in the spring.

Many were pink, blue, or lilac.

However, my hydrangeas did not remain one color.

The blue would turn purple or violet as the weeks passed, adapting to the changing temperatures. One year, however, as the harvest of pumpkins and apples ripened, my hydrangeas that had been blue, then purple, were now berry-red. How well they had adapted to the changing temperatures! We, too, have our seasons of happiness and gloom, youth and aging. There is beauty in each season if we can only appreciate it. As young moms, we may be so busy with obstetrician’s visits, baby formula, and social media that we may not see the beauty of our season.

Do we appreciate the blessing of robust health? What about the gift of opportunity, a past not yet full of mistakes, clear eyes, a clear mind, and hands and feet not afflicted with rheumatic pains? Enjoy your youthful blue hydrangeas.

In the blossoming days of midlife, we may be exhausted with after-school activities for our little musicians and soccer players.

We also may be trying to help pay the mortgage and insurance while building a career. But are we too busy to rejoice that God gave us the ability to work? Are we too tired to be thankful for a job that pays for the SUV or the compact, the apartment or the house on the hill? Pause for a minute. It’s summer.

Enjoy your lilac hydrangeas. Then fall comes in with its loneliness, empty nest, empty heart, and obituaries. Our fall creeps in with doctor’s visits, MRIs, and CT scans. Fall limps in with its retirement homes and forgetfulness.

Yes, our fall may be here, but we are still alive, albeit with more salt than pepper in our hair and with replaced knees. We may still have loving spouses, children, and grandchildren who willingly run our errands. Blue, lilac, cranberry: what’s the color of your hydrangeas? Whatever it is, enjoy the changes that time has wrought.

Revel in the beauty of your hydrangeas, and remember that the God who loves us “has made all things beautiful in its time.”

Annette Walwyn Michael