Friday was the last day of class, and Profesora Casti lead her students to Almagro, the part of Buenos Aires known for its flower vendors. First, the group wandered among the flower stalls on Acuňa de Figueroa where baskets of roses filled the air with intense fragrances. Leonie bent over the bunches to breathe in their perfume, and she took turns saying their names out loud with her classmates. They chatted with the vendors who told them where they grew their flowers and how they worked from early in the morning until late at night planting seeds, hand-watering, and pruning in order to produce the most beautiful blooms.
The vendors chatted about Mother’s Day, weddings, and baptisms for which they sold the most flowers. Some stayed open 24 hours a day. The best time to buy flowers, they said, was late at night or early in the morning. These really were the most romantic times of the day anyway.
The class meandered to Calle Sarmiento where even more vendors had their shops. One shop, filled with tuberose and jasmine, perfumed the air outside its door with heady floral fragrances. Inside, the vendor was wrapping flower bouquets in cellophane paper for a woman and her two daughters.
Leonie wandered away from the group to admire the lilies of another vendor. While she was reaching out to touch a petal, a woman dressed in a green apron came out to greet her.
“Your lilies are gorgeous,” exclaimed Leonie.
“Thank you. My grandfather used to sell flowers on the streets of Buenos Aires. My father sold flowers in the old market in stall 8, and, now, I rent this shop here to continue our family tradition.”
Leonie moved under the shade of the willow tree that grew right in front of the storefront. “I love flowers,” she said.
“I love flowers, too,” replied the vendor. “I’ll sell them until I’m old and frail.”
Leonie paused in thought, running the woman’s response through her mind. Forever was a long time to do just one thing. Leonie didn’t know that she would ever find something that she wanted to do for so long. The woman in the green apron smiled at her, her face flushed with the essence of intense happiness, her eyes like shining opals.
“So,” Leonie asked, “You don’t ever wish that you could do anything else?”
The woman smoothed down the front of her green apron with hands crusted with dirt, chapped from years of digging and planting. “No, never. I never wish to do anything else. Each day in my flower shop I get to express my creativity, and that gives me intense joy. Besides, I know that I like to be around beautiful things, and what could be more beautiful than a shop full of flowers.”
“You seem so content.”
“You see this willow tree that’s giving you shade? A willow tree symbolizes fulfilling wishes of the heart. It also symbolizes inner vision. I’m lucky to know what fulfills my life. That knowledge is my inner wisdom.”
The vendor showed Leonie around her tiny shop, identifying the names of all the flowers and inviting her to smell their fragrances. Leonie told the vendor that she was about to take a trip to search for her life’s purpose. As the woman listened to her story, her eyes glistened and a whisper of a smile set upon her lips.
Before Leonie left, the woman held out a yellow rose. “This rose symbolizes our new friendship,” she said. “Friends are one of the most precious treasures of your life. From now one, you and I are lifelong friends. I wish you success on your trip and hope that you find your version of life fulfillment.
That night, just before Leonie went to bed, she sat at her desk to write in her journal. I know what fulfills me, she wrote. After setting down her pen, she felt anxious. But I don’t know what fulfills me, she worried. I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I don’t know what makes me happy day after day after day.
Leonie looked at the yellow rose that the flower vendor had given her. Its yellow petals brightened up the shadows of her room. She remembered how gently the woman had picked up each flower and described its characteristics, moving among her flowers with grace, touching each blossom with respect and admiration; her movements were filled with love.
Now Leonie knew. The woman had been a messenger from her own soul to teach her how to find her own purpose. Love was an integral part of finding fulfillment. When she found out what she loved, she would find her contentment.
Leonie touched the yellow rose, and her heart filled with joy when she remembered that the woman promised that they would be friends for life. Friendship, she thought. I have love already.
She was worried about her mother who seemed to struggle to stay present, something pulling her focus away or inward. Some days she sat in the arm chair by the window, staring straight ahead, her gray-blue eyes lost in deep thoughts.
When Sestina tried to talk to her, her mother struggled to respond. “Wait a minute,” she would say, then, with a determined set to her mouth, she’d squeeze her eyes shut for a brief moment, open them wide, and glare at Sestina while she slowly made a lucid response.
Her mother woke up early every morning, took a spit-bath at the sink in her bathroom, put on her clothes, and combed her golden white curls until she looked neat and ready for an outing. After breakfast—not a big one mind you—just a piece of bacon and half a piece of toast with butter and strawberry jam—she sat down in the chair by the window and disappeared into her private thoughts. Her breathing was labored, and she raised her shoulders every time she inhaled, her chest rising slowly, and she exhaled by opening her mouth and releasing a small burst of air.
On Wednesday, while her mother was sitting in her arm chair, Sestina went out to prune the old roses off the rose bushes. She knew her mother not only loved flowers, but she loved roses most of all, and Sestina wanted the roses to look perfect when her mother looked out the window. Eight tea rose bushes grew in the redwood planter, a raised bed so that the roses bloomed at the same height as the window. The planter was about six feet from the window so when her mother looked out, she could see the stems wave gently in the breeze and glow in the sun.
The yellow rose bush was the heartiest with big blossoms that bloomed like cabbages. One bush grew lavender roses, medium in size with delicate petals and a hue that took Sestina’s breath away. Four of the bushes bloomed with various versions of red flowers, each a unique shade of red and shaped petals. The two white bushes bloomed with the most flowers, always producing plenty of blossoms so that Sestina could cut some and bring them in the house.
Sestina held the kitchen shears in her right hand and pulled back a single stem from a rose bush, looking for the perfect compound leaf of five leaflets so she could prune the dead rose at just the right angle and place to encourage more growth.
As she made the cut, the daylight intensified into a blaze of light all around her. Insects’ voices grew loud into a hum like a Gregorian chant, and she heard the wind rush under the wings of a swallowtail butterfly who hovered over a rosebush nearby. The butterfly glided toward her, waved its wings close to her nose, and she thought that she heard it whisper, it’s time for her, time for her. Its black face smiled, and its eyes looked deep into hers, speaking wordlessly of love. She heard the breath of the breeze travel through the petals of each rose, and the scissors snapped the rose’s stem like a clap of thunder. She heard the leaves of the lemon tree give birth to new cells and buds of fruit. Then, suddenly, the breaths of the insects and flying creatures, echoes of the growing plants, and pneuma of the wind were silent, and the garden was still.
When Sestina got back to the cottage, she found that her mother had died. Her face was turned toward the open window and her hands were folded over each other like a final prayer.
My mother’s name was Rose Marie—most appropriate for when she attended church, sitting at the end of the third row, her mouth pursed into a straight line and her eyes staring obediently at the altar. Yet, one of her male friends called her “Rosie,” which, most of the time, suited her better. She was feisty, knew how to get you to do what she wanted, and a woman with the most interesting hobbies. One of her favorite hobbies was her appreciation of flowers.
It’s not surprising, then, that I’ve loved flowers since I was a little girl. When I was four years old, playing house with my younger brother, my mother grew calla lilies in a corner of the back yard. I admired heir smooth, white bell-shaped flowers and bright, yellow pistils, and my mother called them “resurrection” flowers because they bloomed around Easter time when Jesus rises from the dead.
My mother cut the lilies and took them indoors to decorate our dining room table. I loved their intoxicating scent–a comforting aroma of clover mixed with a lemony fragrance. Their creamy-textured petals exuded luxury, and they lasted longer than most other cut flowers.
When we lived in Air Force base housing for four years in England, my mother planted bulbs in the rectangular planting beds under the windows in the front yard. After the snow melted in late January, daffodils poked their green shoots out of the brown soil. Day by day, I watched them grow bigger and taller. The flower knobs soon formed, and, slowly, pastel yellow flowers peeked out from the green stalks until one day they brightened our simple front yard with happy yellow fringed trumpets.
After the daffodils lost their blaze, the tulips came up behind them like copycats—rising like slender dolls out of the earth until, in a few weeks, their red cups of petals swayed in the light breezes of March. My mother told me to never pick a tulip because they represented perfect love, and she wanted them to bloom for as long as possible to bring good luck to our home. The variety of tulips that she grew were just right—not too showy, not too dramatic, not overly romantic. When they were blooming, our front yard felt comfortable and stable.
Across the street from this house on Shepherd’s Way was a forest where bluebells bloomed in mass profusion every April and May. English bluebells are associated with fairies, those miniature creatures that cause mischief for humans. I had a wistful imagination, and I spent hours walking amongst these bluebells with their sticky stems, watching for fairies and feeling grateful for the experience of being lost in a sea of blossoms.
My mother let me take a bucket out to the forest and fill it full of bluebells. I brought them home and arranged them in as many vases I could find, and when the vases were full, I used Mason jars for the rest of the flowers. I placed vases and jars full of the humble bluebells on bookcases, tables, dressers, and night stands, and my mother’s blue eyes lit up when she saw them.
My high school years were dominated by carnations. Homecomings, proms, dances, and balls called for corsages, and corsages always came as carnations. After the dances, I saved each corsage by sticking its stem into a tiny vase of water. Later, I dried it out on a saucer on my dresser, and, often, lifted it to my nose to inhale its floral and peppery scent. My mother didn’t like them because their scent reminded her of funerals and sadness.
When I was seventeen, my mother and I visited The Berkeley Rose Garden, a colorful display built into the hills of Berkeley comprised of hundreds of varieties of roses and thousands of individual rose bushes. The rose beds were terraced on the hills into the shape of an amphitheater and separated by flagstone paths.
My mother taught me the differences between polyantha roses, floribunda roses, and tea roses, and she explained how new roses were developed by cross-breeding every year. I liked the polyantha buses for their smaller heights and tightly packed blooms. I liked the floribunda bushes for their profusion of blossoms on branching stems, especially the varieties that produced variegated blooms like “purple tiger”—roses with streaks of purple, lavender, and white in each flower. These showy bushes had other dramatic names, too, like Celestial Night, Scentimental, Sweet Madame Blue, and Forever Amber.
Most of all, I adored the tea roses—their thick stems punctuated by large thorns and leaves that grew in patterns of five, with the stems ending in large graceful blooms of circling petals. The names for these sophisticated blooms were grandiose—Double Delight, Mister Lincoln, Chantilly Cream, Love Song, and Oympiad.
Arbors held the climbing roses like the orange Top of the World, the pink Pearly Gates, and the lavender Long Song varieties. Shrub roses and tree roses filled in every nook and cranny so that the whole garden produced a cacophony of colors for our eyes.
Together, we read the names of as many varieties as we could, pausing at the ones that were the most fragrant or dazzling. I nestled my nose into the blooms as deep as I dared, trying to memorize the smells forever. Never before had I been in the midst of such splendor, unrivaled beauty, and mesmerizing fragrances.
According to Mother, each color of rose had its own meaning and the number of roses given has a significance as well. Yellow roses are for friendship and red roses show love. Six roses means a growing affection and a dozen roses demonstrates complete love.
The Berkeley Rose Garden also possessed an incomparable backdrop for our mother-daughter conversation. As we walked together between the rows, we wondered at the vast view of the San Francisco Bay where the Golden Gate Bridge spread across the Bay’s exit like the arms of a graceful goddess. The water changed from denim to indigo to periwinkle to cerulean to navy to slate depending on how the surrounding hills cast their shadows, the currents massaged its surface, and the sun penetrated into the prisms of the ocean’s molecules.
Back at home, around the perimeter of my mother’s Sacramento patio grew dozens of camellia bushes under the shade of a giant mulberry tree. From November to April, these glossy green overgrown bushes produced hundreds of curly, pink blossoms. Mother told her children that camellias mean “young sons and daughters,” which seemed so fitting for my mother’s house since she had ten children who were easily outnumbered by the profusions of camellias in her garden.
When my mother moved into an assisted living apartment, she made sure that she had a vase in her cupboard for flowers. This vase was about 8 inches high and made out of white milk glass; any type of flower would look beautiful in it.
She had developed macular degeneration in both eyes, so she couldn’t read or, sometimes, even find the food on her dinner plate; she could, however, always sense when you held a bouquet of flowers in your hands to give her. A smile that matched the petals of a pink rose would light up her face as she took them from you.
She asked you to put them in her vase or find a place for them on her desk or window sill. Every few days, she called and told you how they looked or smelled, or how many blooms were still perky or drooping, until one day, she called and told you that she was cleaning out the vase. I gave her lilies at Easter, red roses during the summer, chrysanthemums during the fall, and a poinsettia at Christmastime. Her favorite were always the roses because, after all, she was named after them.
I ordered the flowers for my mother’s casket when she died. The funeral representative recommended a spray of red roses and red carnations, but I knew better. Never would I allow carnations to come near my dear mom. I ordered the largest spray of red roses I could because I knew that nothing less would make her happier.
The officiate at the gravesite told us that red roses were such an appropriate choice. “Red roses symbolize eternal love,” he said. We placed our spray of eternal love over her gravesite after the service, and their blooms thrived for weeks in the chilly California air of December and January.
Two months later, my husband bought me a dozen deep red roses for Valentine’s Day. I carefully extracted them, one by one, from the brown wrapping paper, snipped each stem with a pair of sharp pruning scissors by about one inch, and arranged them in a tall, clear crystal vase filled with fresh water and rose food. Then, I ceremoniously placed the vase of love on the coffee table in the living room—a place visible from most places in our house during the day.
One day, as he sat in an arm chair in front of these red roses, he told me how wonderful he felt looking at their beauty. “I’ve never thought about how beautiful flowers looked before,” he said, with joy filling his eyes. “I want to sit here forever.”
I realized then, that my mother’s appreciation of flowers was so strong that its influence had passed from her to me, and through me, to my husband. My love for flowers also positively influences my son, my daughter, my friends, and even people I don’t know with the optimistic power of beauty.
My mother—my Rosie knew that the delicate blooms of flowers—so ethereal in their form and beauty—are most extraordinary at communicating the powerful, yet intangible nature of love.
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