So I’ve been growing zinnias this summer. Cubic yard after cubic yard, all zinnias. Yesterday, we’re hanging out en famille in the front yard and Owen is checking out my garden, telling me what to dig up and move and what to save. Very helpful, that four-year-old. He spots a beautiful pink zinnia and I don’t know how or why, but it’s agreed that he will clip it and I will procure a vase for it and he can keep it in his room. We do so. It is lovely.

Cut to the bathroom, I’m brushing the kids’ teeth. Owen expresses excitement about his flower and how he is so excited to keep it forever.

Is this where I should put the foreshadowing?

I, like a dum-dum, casually say, Well, you know it won’t last forever, it’s just a flower, it’ll probably die within the week, but that’s OK, we’ll toss it on the compost heap and cut another one.

Oh my God. He burst into tears. He was wracked with them. I might as well have told him that his puppy had incurable cancer and we’d just kick it to the curb next Tuesday. Sobbing.

“But I don’t want my flower to die!”

Jesus, I had no idea what to say. It never occurred to me (me, the lover of the green babies) to prepare my kids for the death of botanical-type objects. I mean, we pull weeds all the time, we eat the peas right off the vine. I didn’t think that floral deceasement was like, a Topic I had to cover. Obviously I was incorrect.

Thus I began a long schpiel about seasons, and autumn, and the Age of Aquarius, and turn, turn, turn, and compost heaps, and seeds, and appreciating fleeting beauty. He was not soothed. Finally I took him onto my lap and just let him cry.

The moment turned and grew. This was not about the flower, no. This had become bigger. I was witnessing a Moment, a developmental milestone, a watershed of the human experience. This was about death and facing up to it.

After a while I started crying, too. I thought of people I loved who had died. Of fleeting beauty and being powerless to stop time. Soon we were both crying and just clinging to each other, me apologizing for making him sad, him shaking his head and holding on, both of us mourning something that wasn’t even gone yet.

“I don’t like it anymore,” he said, avoiding looking at his flower.

“Do me one favor,” I said to him. “Promise me that you will enjoy it first. We’ll look at it together, and remember how beautiful it was in the garden, and how much fun we had cutting it and putting it in the vase, and how nice it looks here on your toy chest with the sun shining in on it. I want you to remember that, and think about you and me together when you look at that flower, and enjoy it while it is still here with you. Can you do that for me?” And he nodded. And he smiled. And I smiled. And another tear rolled down my face, not gonna lie.

And then Mackie, fresh from his bath, walks up to the two of us.

“Mommy crying,” he said. “Noney crying.” He looked from Owen’s face to mine and back. We were both snuffling and wiping our eyes. Then Mackie stood back, in all his tiny naked two-year-old glory, and yelled, “My penis is big!”

Thereby demonstrating at a very early age an understanding of the purpose of potty humor.