200 Rose Bushes
6 mins read

200 Rose Bushes

It’s that time of year again, and one of the only days nationally dedicated to celebrating love!  How sad…

David and I are going on a date with some of our favorite couples, adults only and no kid conversation allowed. I dropped off candy baskets to my daughters, since they are at their dad’s and will give Rain and Shaya chocolate too.  Rain actually asked me, “Mommy what are you getting me for Valentine’s Day?” The nerve, I thought!

But even that wasn’t as ballsy as my girlfriend, who bought an amazing piece of jewelry for herself “from” her husband and presented it to him as if she was doing him a favor. “Here is the gift I bought for you FOR ME, would you like to give it to me now?” That’s BALLS, and the funny thing is that he can beyond afford it, and actually appreciated her gesture.  Not every man is as thoughtful as he is generous.  In that case, it works beautifully for both of them!

When Rain asked me that question, I wanted to tell her that she isn’t my lover, but then I realized how long it may be before she ever has one and how sweet her inquiry really was.  In her case with a French-Tunisian father, there may NEVER be a boy calling.  So everyone will get love notes from me, and I will play a sweet game a friend turned me on to.  We will all write to each other confessing what we really think of one another.  Holiday inspired 😉 I hope these will be positive letters, LOL!  I think it’s so important to teach our children to express themselves, tell us what they honestly feel and remember that love is even better when it is shared.

My paperback version of The Naked Mom came out this week.  My new cover was shot in my beloved rose garden.

I love my roses for many reasons…. like summer time when my vases are filled with different wild colors and their perfume fills the air, backyard parties that are made colorful, surrounded by the hundreds of blooms, mornings spent with my children – cutting our favorite buds, and the hours I spend appreciating the story behind my 200 rose bushes.

It truly is one of favorite memories from building our home.  My life is full of beautiful moments shared with David, because he is a hopeless romantic. This story is probably the sweetest one I’ve experienced with my man… I want to share it with you this Valentines Day.  If you are thirsting for more…ways to keep your romance alive, juggle motherhood with marriage, set the mood and learn how to get a “Hall Pass To The Wild Side” – please read my book.

I hope you find a little romance every day!!!! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Chapter 11. Getting It (Back) ON

When we first moved in together, David still had the first set of wheels he had ever owned — a Jeep he had bought at sixteen, and dreamed of giving to a son of his own someday. He considered the truck vintage, but I considered it more of a twenty-year-old eyesore sitting in our driveway. I knew he loved it the way you love your oldest, most threadbare jeans — the ones so retro they’re cool again, and even when they become unwearable, you can’t bear to toss them out because they’ve just hung in there so long and have been through so much with you. I totally get that kind of sentimental attachment to possessions that everyone else in the world considers replaceable. Anyway, that heap of a Jeep had always been David’s baby. Until he had a human one, and had to concede that the whole car-seat-but-no-roof-thing was not feasible. We opted for a more family-friendly ride, but the Jeep still sat in the driveway

One afternoon when I came home, it wasn’t there. I idly wondered if David had taken it for a nostalgic cruise along the Pacific Coast Highway, but when I got inside, David was there waiting for me. “Come out back. I want to show you something,” he urged me. I silently hoped it wasn’t a landslide. We had had to scrape together every spare dime we had to finish building the house, and we hadn’t been able to afford landscaping yet. We dreamed of having beautiful, terraced gardens someday, but so far, there was just dirt, and our imaginations were the only thing flowering on the terraced hillside. “Look,” David said now.

I found myself gazing at pots of beautiful roses. There were hundreds of rosebushes, blooms in every possible hue, their intoxicating scent perfuming the breeze. It took my breath away. “How did you do this?” I managed to stammer.

It turned out that a gardener had been admiring David’s old Jeep. His son needed a car, but the gardener didn’t have the cash to buy him one. David ended up bartering with him for roses. His sacrifice was so unexpected, the sheer tenderness of it touches me deeply to this day. It’s no coincidence, years later, that one of my most gratifying pastimes is to work in my rose garden. The roses have become an affirmation of David’s love for me, and even a single stem in a bud vase on my vanity is a powerful reminder of how much we mean to each other. 

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