Rabbits in the Rose Garden

My first marriage lasted a total of ten years, most of it spent in the south, living in the same city as my husband's family. Looking back, I wonder that I never got to know them any better.

My father in law was an intimidating and impressive figure - businessman, scholar, philanthropist, philosopher, newspaper publisher, teacher - but he could never could invent a way to keep the rabbits out of his prized rose garden. It drove him wild that the small brown creatures regularly outwitted him, devouring the satiny rose petals with abandon. He tried feeding them, tried barb wire and a variety of types of fencing, even tried moving the entire garden but the raiding rabbits returned night after night, season after rose growing season. The fragile flowers were too much temptation and too easy a target.

My mother in law - a mystifyingly kind and gentle spirit with the protective instincts of a tiger when it came to her children - also loved flowers but preferred to work in solitary in her greenhouse, especially on the cool, clear spring mornings. She gardened for the pure pleasure of working with her hands and the soil and often emerged with smears of dirt on her face and stray leaves in her coiffed hair. When company arrived, she would throw open the front door and cry, Come in my house! with intense sincerity and she gave untold hours of her time to charity, the elderly, the less fortunate and the Presbyterian church.

When I came to know them, they lived in a house of their own design, a showcase and the grandest I had ever seen, five bedrooms each with its own bath and some with their own dressing rooms, formal living and dining, den, breakfast room and kitchen plus servants quarters, swimming pool with changing rooms and a pool house, multi car garage, wine cellar and greenhouse. It always seemed to be filled with flowers and light, artwork and antiques, precious and beautiful things collected on their travels yet it was a touchable house. After the children had grown and left, only a cat named Socrates was kept for company. I was surprised that he never got lost.

As the end of my marriage approached, I came to realize how little I knew my in laws - their history was public enough, their community service was well known, their accomplishments were often headline news. Their name opened doors and made things possible but of the people underneath, I knew next to nothing. It was precisely the opposite with my own family - I had no idea where my parents had met or courted or even married, but I knew far too many details about the war their marriage had become.

I learned from each - that no family is perfect, that dysfunction comes in many shapes and sizes, that everyone is flawed, some far more than others, and that we all would rather keep our flaws to ourselves and pretend to be normal. We all have rabbits in our rose gardens.