In high school I still thought that a car meant freedom, and that is because back then it did – freedom from home; freedom from confronting my mother’s husband YET AGAIN about the hidden bottles of vodka the dog sniffed out from beneath the back yard shed; freedom from teenage heartache that is too brand new to be anything less than painful. Smoking out the window while driving, I would contemplate my escapes from the city I grew up in, a city that almost thirty years after Kennedy’s assassination felt like it was still struggling to recover. Could be the fact that I was never encouraged to interact with my community that kept me emotionally distant from it – we would have to ask my mother about that one and that, my friends, is another story.
But while my mother dealt with home and skittishness about my roaming Dallas at will, she was happy to let me drive off even to other states, which I did promptly my first year of driving. Our trip to Santa Fe was so liberating, so exciting to me that I asked my best friend if he’d do it again our senior year only this time to the Grand Canyon. He of course said yes.
We drove through the ugliest bits of West Texas and the most beautiful parts of New Mexico. We arrived at the Grand Canyon at night and sat in darkness at its rim – the darkest place we had ever been to, yawning in front of us. The titanic gape of it, sensed but completely unseen. It was enough to put shivers in my spine. Still does.
The next day we drove to the North Rim, and on the way the road cut through an enormous field of wildflowers. I had never seen so many. They stretched from roadside to the edge of the tree line on the horizon. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
It was the first time I really loved flowers.
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The men I have dated have never given me flowers. Maybe once or twice in Amsterdam I was brought home a bouquet, but this was common for both of us there as the flowers cost practically pennies. These bouquets were never for me, per se, but for our home. It was just as likely to be me bringing home ten bright gerbera daisies that for the lot I paid less than five dollars. They were a joyful decoration in a house where joy was rapidly crumbling.
But my girlfriend – now she did flowers. Not often. And that is why they were so special when she did.
My senior year of college and she had graduated already, off to London to arrange for her visa to come back and we missed each other so completely I felt I was not myself. I struggled to figure out who I was without her; a common struggle, I suspect, during a first seriously emotional relationship.
On my birthday that year I was called to the bell desk of my dorm to pick up a package. When I got there the girl handed me a long, slender white box, tied with a white grosgrain bow. I opened it to find six perfect white roses.
It was the first time someone I was in love with gave me flowers. I started to cry. They were just so beautiful. So perfectly formed. So opposite to me.
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I’ve planted herbs and vegetables in the back yard, but I have yet to plant any flowers. There is a rose bush my grandmother planted that flowers and wilts outside our bedroom window.
The thought has occured to me to plant more, but then I think of the excuse most of the men in my life have given for not buying me flowers – it is always so depressing when they die.
For a long time I did not agree with them. But I think I have changed my mind.
A petal falls for every disappointment; an edge turns brown with every false hope.
I do not think I can bear to have them.
