The Lettuce Is Bolting and So Am I (Sometimes)

What bolting lettuce taught me about burnout, boundaries, and being alive.

My four-year-old is in the garden, soaked to the bone, shrieking with joy, launching water balloons at the neighbor kids like some tiny anarchist in damp underpants. The twins are in the kiddie pool, squatting and splashing like delighted little toads. Her curls are wet, his grin uncontainable, their diapers absurdly inflated like buoyant little boats.

It is early June, and everything is pushing toward the sky. The grass is thick and green and the tomatoes are climbing their stakes like it’s a race. My lavender is blooming, purple spikes rising like tiny exhalations, and my eldest keeps picking it and handing it to me like he’s gifting a sacrament. I found two stalks last night on the edge of the bathtub, right next to the mystery plastic boat that guards our drain. A love offering, I suppose, to the gods of maternal hygiene.

And the lettuce. Dear God, the lettuce. She has had it. She is bolting straight up, bitter and dramatic, throwing yellow flowers like middle fingers to the sky.

I planted her in that big pot months ago and we enjoyed her all through the cool spring. Tender, abundant, sweet. But it’s been too hot too long. Every time I walk past, she catches my eye like a high-maintenance friend I’ve been meaning to call. Pull me out already, she seems to say. I’m not who I used to be. And I nod. Guilty. Tired. A little in awe of her conviction. She is not producing anymore, just insisting on her right to rise.

Maybe I’ll plant peppers. They can handle the heat, I hear. They don’t need coddling. They just want sun and space and a little time.

Kind of like me.

This weekend, I slipped into the lake alone. Everyone else was still drying off, but I needed the cold. Far off, my father and eldest stood ankle-deep, not speaking much, which is its own quiet kind of prayer.

The water was baptismal, but without the fuss. No sermon. No choir. Just the sun overhead like a witness and my limbs remembering how to belong to me. It felt like wringing out a dishcloth that had been holding other people’s needs too long. A swim, yes. But also a surrender. Also a homecoming.

While I swam, my husband was home with the twins. No laminated schedule. No instructions. Just trust. He has always known their rhythms like some people know their way home in the dark.

That swim saved me.

Not from my life. I don’t want out. I love this loud, sprawling, cereal-crusted life. But the water reminded me of who I am when no one is calling my name. And I need that version of me to stay in the game. So I sneak the swims. I protect the runs. I lace up my shoes like they’re battle gear and slip out the door like I’m making a break for the border.

There’s still that fog. The one that praises fathers like Nobel laureates for doing bedtime while mothers are expected to vanish into the work like saints with lasagna-stained halos. Try stepping out of that story and you’ll hear it. The sharp little judgments dressed as concern. Must be nice to get away like that.

It is nice. And necessary. Not a decadent detour but a recalibration. Like checking your pulse after holding your breath too long. My husband doesn’t get a standing ovation for keeping the kids alive. He gets something better. Respect. We are both holding the line so neither of us has to lose our minds or our names.

I have stopped auditioning for the silent judges of modern motherhood. The ones who score us like Olympic gymnasts but never hand out medals. Now I name what I need. I claim the time. I let the lettuce bolt when I have to, trusting that not everything needs saving to still have worth. Some seasons are for blooming. Others are for wilting without apology.

This isn’t about self-care as spa days or elaborate rituals, though I won’t say no to either. This is about spiritual survival. About unclenching your jaw long enough to remember what joy feels like in your molars. About swimming in cold water while white birds blink in the distance, and knowing that your body still belongs to you. That your soul isn’t a bottomless mimosa brunch to be poured out until it fizzes dry.

The rain kept falling that night. Everyone asleep. The house quiet. The air finally cool.

I stood over the twins, watching them tangle deeper into sleep.

And I thought, yes. Let this be what they remember.

A mother who loved them enough to stay.

And enough to sometimes leave.