It was one of those holidays. One of those
holidays that requires flowers. Not a gift certificate or a lottery
ticket holiday but one of those made up holidays not like Christmas
with ipso fatso in a red suit crashing through a window or slithering
like a Jenny Craig retread down a chimney to deliver U-Hauls full
of worthless gifts ready for the return line at Wal-Mart or Easter,
now there's a real holiday, with rabbits, chocolate morphed into a
barnyard of creatures, jelly beans, colored eggs, and Jesus jumping
bail at the Resurrection Inn, or the Fourth of July where it is better
to give than receive from the neighborhood drunks cherry bombs and
the rockets' red glare bouncing off roof shingles.
Flowers? You wanted
flowers. You of the anti-bacterial thumb. You who called the front
yard, the garden. It's not a garden, I protested. A garden has rows
and rows of vegetables lined up like British Revolutionary era soldiers
with bright, colorful peppers and tomatoes sprouting from bayonets
impaled in the ground. The front yard is not a garden because
you cannot eat the grass or the weeds only the dog can do that in
order to cleanse its pallet of horse hoof and pig snout all over the
brand new carpeting that we buy every few years because the dog thinks
the carpeting is the "garden."
You wanted flowers. Not of silk or of sweet, Confederate fragrances
that the neighbor's wife uses to remind all their visitors that Cotton
Is King and Eli Whitney drank gin. Nor tulips from
Roses? Yellow Roses?
I don't think Ahmed at the corner beef jerky and Zippo lighter convenience
store carries yellow roses but he does carry an assortment of T-shirts
and license plates celebrating life as a bass or snook. Or there are
always bags of chips that were ears of corn or buried potatoes in
a previous life.
You wanted roses. Not white or red but yellow. Yellow I suppose like
the sunlight even though it is probably white or red when it leaves
the surface of the sun and turns yellow from motion sickness by the
time it reaches us here on earth. Yellow roses. Okay.
So I drove with our daughter who was born twelve or thirteen flowerless
holidays ago give or a take a teacher conference or two. I was afraid
to go alone to one of those stores full of outdoor chimes that would
make good target practice for the shotgun I inherited from Uncle Billy,
and to be approached by one of those ladies who owns the place because
she has too much money from interior decorating but mostly from her
husband who plays golf way too much with Ping golf clubs. I took my
daughter because I figured it was good practice for the SAT and the
Ivy League.
Roses? Yellow
roses?
I looked at my daughter
when the lady who smelled like the deodorant I hang from the rearview
mirror of my flatbed truck informed me that all the roses in the city
have already been sold, in fact,
Out of roses? Yellow roses?
I looked at my daughter. There were no
Closing? You can't close. I need roses, yellow roses or I am mulch.
Planning? Do you have a sign that says it's illegal, immoral, or indecent
to buy yellow roses on a man made holiday after
911?
Trespassing? My daughter pulled me, rose-less, towards the door
without a rain check. Mrs. South Beach Time Share, before quickly
deadbolting the door, did take mercy on my leveraged soul and gave
directions to another establishment, a nursery, that possibly had
long stemmed roses. I'm there I said through the bullet proof glass
that she windexed from inside.
We arrived at the nursery. There were roses everywhere! More than
Chill I said.
Don't have those, he said. No, I mean I don't need the lineup for
the World Series of Roses. I need twelve long stem yellow roses for
this man made holiday that is almost over. My daughter nodded in agreement.
The old man surveyed his rose garden and located some splashes of
yellow amongst the red, white and lavender. One potato, two potato,
three potato, four. There are four blossoms on this one he pointed.
Six on this one. Two over here. That's twelve in my book he stated.
All yellow.
I stuck my nose in each blossom like they were upside down
wedding dresses. What a magnificent smell! Romance incarnate! Sold,
I said, but what about the sheer, fancy paper instead of these black,
plastic buckets and all the other crap in the bucket? You'll need
that he said when you plant them in about six hours of sunlight a
day and not too much water or it'll kill them. And make sure the roots
are not wound up tight like the guts of a baseball or a golf ball.
The roots have to make good contact with the soil or it's lights out
for the roses.
Plant them, huh? I looked at my daughter. Yeah, okay,
ring us up, this man made holiday is almost over and it's the thought
that counts anyway, right? The old man agreed and we drove away
with three buckets of roses, all yellow.
You cried when you saw the
roses. Too much water will kill them I said watching the tears fall
on the roses and they need about six hours of sunlight every day and
soil that has leftovers from the Crazy Buffet and is fat with wood
chips, compost, pine needles, cow manure and fertilizer.
Still you
cried. Save it for the planting I said, your roses need some water
when put in the soil, and I went to the aluminum shed that I inherited
from my father who set it up like an irregular trapezoid tall enough
for shovels that lean at less than sixty degrees.
I was on the third
hole, not on the golf course with
If you keep crying they won't be roses,
too much water, remember? I said to no avail. They look like roses,
they smell like roses I said.
They aren't roses you said. Well, if
they aren't roses, a dozen long-stemmed, yellow roses like you wanted,
what are they I asked rubbing my eyes like Aladdin's lamps trying
to see what they really were but when I finished rubbing the same
roses were still there.
What are they you asked, repeating my question.
They are another responsibility you said like washing the dishes,
making the beds, fixing dinner, cleaning up the cats' hairballs. That's
what they are you said.
You wanted twelve, long-stemmed yellow roses
for a Chinese vase from the Ming dynasty full of water that don't
grow, don't need to be watered or fertilized? That's what you wanted
I asked. You nodded from the
If I gave
you a fish you would eat for a day but if I taught you to fish you
would eat for a lifetime I said but let me paraphrase that. If I gave
you roses, you would have them for a few days but if I gave you rose
bushes you would have roses for a lifetime I said. That smells
like dead fish you said.
You wanted roses to look at, admire, and
remember when we first met you said, the trips to New York through
Washington Square with pigeons and skateboarders to Vermont's covered
bridges and streams full of polished stones not a dead fish in a black
bucket to be buried in the garden.
Garden? It's not a garden I said,
this is the front yard where these holes are dug. And those are not
roses you said. And how about if I plant these roses that are roses
that are not roses in the garden that's not a garden and your tears
stopped and the flowers in your eyes began.
Author's Bio: Graduate
of the