Decapitation

My daughter's homeroom teacher at school has fresh flowers every week. Her husband brings them to school on Monday. The flowers stay in a vase on her desk all week. On Friday, she hands out a few stems to each student to take home. This tradition has been fun for us because we've had a small vase of flowers at our house each day for the last 4+ weeks. 

Last week, she brought home two tulip stems from her teacher. As soon as she got into the car, I saw one of the blooms snap off the stem. My heart sank a bit when I saw it happened. It must've been something about the motion of her getting onto the car and holding the stems in her hand which jolted the flowers and broke off one of the flower heads. 

We drove home and I thought about what I could do with the beautiful yellow flower.  I couldn't just throw it away, it was still vibrant and alive. I ended up finding a shallow dish, filled it with some water, and put the flower head directly in. This way, we could still enjoy the flower even though it wasn't on top of a stem. 

This flower head lasted for 6 days like this!

 

I've been a perfectionist for much of my life. In the last decade of having children, I thought my perfectionist tendencies had gone away some. My kids leave the house in disarray with toys and papers; I don't always ask them to clean up. My children leave bits of food on the table after a meal; I don't bother wiping them off immediately. This is somewhat true. I don't feel the need for instant solutions regarding issues of cleanliness or young children's natural behavior. 

But when it comes to emotional "mistakes", I find myself having a hard time relinquishing my perfectionism. When I saw the flower break off the stem (yes I saw it happen), my heart sank because I knew how excited she was to bring home flowers at the end of each school week. It brings her so much joy to give them to me, and I get joy from watching her. Is it true she could have held the flowers more carefully and not broken one upon entering the car? Yes. Can you say she knew to be more careful and hold them more gently? I actually think so. 

But at the end of the day, it wasn't her intention to break the flower off of its stem. Should this be something she's "at fault" for? No. 

She actually wasn't that upset after the flower broke off. Part of me was glad. We came home, I put the flowers in water, and she went about her afternoon and I started working.

Perfectionism is what motivates us to keep working at the same problem to find better solutions.  Perfectionism is what allows us to reach new personal bests. Despite perfectionism being a potentially good characteristic, it can become debilitating if left unchecked. Mastering this balance is one of life's greatest challenges.