Confessions of a Woman Who Bought Her Own Mother’s Day Bouquet

Jean spent an hour staring at her keyboard, waiting for a theme to behave itself and show up. It finally did, wearing petals. Maybe it was the Mother’s Day bouquets stacked on the concierge’s desk, or the tangerine roses she bought herself, or the memory of a Tom Jones look‑alike sending her miniature rosebuds decades ago. Whatever the reason, flowers marched in and took over—as they tend to do in Jean’s life—demanding to be written about….AI

I’ve been drinking coffee in front of my keyboard for an hour, and I hadn’t written a single word until now. No theme was jelling in my head until I decided to write about flowers. Saturday I’d been over to the other building, where the concierge’s desk was completely covered with Mother’s Day floral deliveries. Except for one bouquet—the one our resident retired lawyer sent to all the ladies here at the Continuum Care Community. He does that for every holiday, and when I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, he said it makes him happy. I replied, “It makes us happy too.”

Never being a mother, I’ve never gotten flowers for the holiday unless you count the tangerine roses I bought myself last weekend. If anyone asks about them, I’ll joke that they were from the dogs in past chapters of my life: Levi, Cooper, Jason, Sarah, Cindy, Jody, Scottie, King, and Blackie. With the exception of the two dogs from my childhood, they all had human names—which should tell you something about the surrogate‑baby relationships I had with the dogs in my life.

When I met my husband, I was working as a floral designer and continued for another decade into our relationship, giving me access to all the flowers anyone could want to bring home. So my husband got in the habit of never buying me flowers, especially given the fact that it took me five years after I left the floral industry before I even wanted fresh flowers back in my life. By then the mold was set. No flowers from Don. He was also not known for giving romantic gifts. Long‑time readers might remember the time he gave me an auxiliary gas tank for my pickup truck for Valentine’s Day when I actually longed for a single red rose. More precisely I longed for the symbolism of getting a single red rose. Yes, I was one of those women who thought a soulmate should be able to read my mine.

Other than corsages for proms way back in high school, no guy has ever given me flowers—with one notable exception. Back during the first six months after meeting Don, I was also dating one of his friends. I’ve told this story before, but briefly: the three of us often found ourselves hanging out together on Fridays after bowling. It was where we all met on the same night. His friend looked like he shared the same gene pool as Tom Jones. His first name was even Tom, and he had the same voice quality. He took full advantage of looking like the famous singer in his fashion choices. “It's not unusual to be loved by anyone, It's not unusual to have fun with anyone, but when I see you hanging about with anyone, It's not unusual to see me cry…” Oh my god, I can still see him serenading me with that song. Tom made the bold move of sending me a bouquet of two dozen pink miniature rosebuds to the flower shop where I worked. Don’t think that didn’t make a splash—seeing a delivery van from another shop bring flowers to one of their employees.

Romance novels (and later, movies) have programmed women for a couple of centuries to be wooed with flowers. And I suspect one reason the custom has held up as long as it has is because it’s an easy gift to give a woman for holidays and special occasions. Easier back in my day when a guy would call up a flower shop and get something delivered. They can still do that, of course, or they can just go to a supermarket and pick out a bouquet themselves. I’ve seen guys at Meijer struggling to choose just the right bunch, and I struggle not to jump in and help them.

The kids of many of my fellow residents here must have the nearby flower shops in their contacts lists, because it’s not uncommon to see deliveries on our concierge’s desk waiting for the recipient to come down and pick them up. And no one seems to be in a hurry to do so, giving everyone a chance to check the card to see who it’s addressed to—a sure sign someone is having a special day. My oldest niece has made me the talk of the day on several occasions, and I have to admit it’s a good feeling to have everyone ask who sent the flowers and why. Not to mention the fact that I really do love having fresh flowers in the house. And I make them last, reworking arrangements as some of the flowers wilt and others are still good. For example, the greenery in the bouquet above is what was left over from my mid-April birthday bouquet. Its the third reincarnation. Last week that greenery was the backdrop for three tulips that were given out at a Memorial held here for one of my mahjong players. 

A few people scoff at their kids “wasting money on something that doesn’t last,” but to me a CCC is the ideal place for fresh flowers, for the same reason they’re so appropriate at funerals. Flowers remind us of the cycle of life. “To every thing there is a season…” When you think about it, flowers don’t truly die—they still hold seeds within their dried-up blooms that could spark life again. When I had a house with an open field-like area in the back I'd bury the heads of flower shop flowers and many of them did come up. And, who knows, maybe the Great Unknown does something similar with some unseen essence we leave behind.

At births and weddings, we use flowers to symbolize growth and our hopes and dreams for the future. At birthdays and anniversaries, they remind us to cherish our benchmarks. They are life‑affirming. The connection between the timeless cycle of birth, growth, and transformation and flowers may be symbolic, but it’s pure perfection in the realm of symbolism.

But even though I was formally schooled in the language of flowers at Hixen’s Floral Design School in Cleveland, Ohio, as a young woman who once received a bouquet of miniature pink rosebuds—known to symbolize innocence and the new beginnings of romance—all that went out the window when they were delivered. I was as giddy as any other young woman that my coworkers saw proof positive that I actually had a boyfriend. And that’s only one example of the power of flowers.

Maybe that’s why flowers still have such power, even after all these years and all these seasons. They don’t last long, but they don’t need to. Their job is to remind us that beauty is worth noticing, that love is worth expressing, and that every life—even ours—keeps blooming in ways we don’t always see until someone hands us a bouquet. And if that bouquet happens to come from a niece, a neighbor, or nine dogs with suspiciously human names, well… the heart doesn’t care. It just opens, the way flowers do. © 

 See you next Wednesday. But if you get notices by email from MailChimp I'm not sure how long it will be before they will start in again. The A to Z Challenge messed them up. I'm on the free service and I don't have enough credits built up yet to get back to my normal schedule.

From Mahjong to Music with a Litte Bowling in Between

 

In my last post I wrote: "Many residents here [at the continuum care facility] have taken on self-appointed roles---social director, mayor, florist, management suck-up, food critic, complainer-in-chief …." and it occurred to me today that I've done the same thing. Some people here call me 'Mahjong Jean' but what I ready am is the self-appointed coordinator of a things mahjong. This is not unique around here. We have the Bingo Ladies who put on a once a month game with cash prizes, the line dancing teacher and the Bridge Director who both manages two sessions a week and the Crackers & Cheese fairies for lack of a better name.

Every since I co-taught mahjong classes last year, increasing our number of players from six to twelve, I've taken on the responsibility of text messaging everyone the day before our Wednesday games to see how many are playing so the next day I'll know how many tables and games I need to set up. I've also created a system to randomize who plays with who that as been very popular and I've established a once a month Sunday skill building game. Our latest skill building involves learning how to score our games because I got the (not so?) bright idea to challenge our sister campus in a tournament this fall. 

I've never been to a tournament except for bowling back in my man-hunting twenties when I was on an all-women's leagues at a bowling alley-slash-bar that had live music on the night when our league played. Back then it was thee place for singles to mingle. It's the place where I met my husband but that's a story I've already told in an old post titled Tall Tales and Little Fish.

I wasn't the best bowler, not the worst either but I wasn't there for that particular game. It was the boy-meets-girl part that attracted me to join the league. I had written a letter to Ann Landers---a newspaper advice columnist in case you're too young to know who she was. I was bemoaning the fact that I didn't think I've ever meet my forever guy. She answered with: “Get out and do things you enjoy doing and it will happen.” So I signed up for every leisure time class I could find and I joined the bowling league. The rest is history. 

When I look back on my life it seems like I spent a lot of time searching for a place to fit in and I rarely thought about the idea that others probably did or do the same thing whether it's at a new school or work place, in new neighborhood or church family. We all have experienced carving out a place for ourselves. For me, sometimes it's felt like I was carving in butter like when I helped form a Red Hat Society chapter and other times it's felt like I was carving in marble like being in my late twenties when I was 'man shopping' Ann Landers style.

Looking for my place in the world is such an old habit that I forget to stop and consider that I may have already found it, at least for this era of my life, in this place. Finding our places in the world means finding our purpose in life and that purpose does and must change as our environment and the people around us changes. It's exhausting---the constant looking, especially if we're looking outward for what can only be found by looking inward.

Change of topic: For a couple of days this week I was haunted by a song on a video that I landed on by chance in a Facebook Short Reel. I thought I would write a post about music in general and that song in particular. But the more I searched my memorial bank I couldn't come up with the reason why it got stuck on auto-play in my head. The song was Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh who is an internationally known British-Irish singer/song writer. In 1986 it hit the top of the charts all over the world. But I was never a fan of Chris's music per say. This week I listened to it over a dozen times and in six versions of the song sang at different points during in his career and I literally felt the sensuality of his voice and those lyrics wrapping around me like a hug. Finally I remembered why it resonated with me! 

I was in my mid forties when the song was popular and I had a red dress that I wore to a special occasion one evening and when we got back home that song played on the radio as Don helped me out of that dress as if he was unwrapping crystal stemware---slow and sensual with the red dress ending in a pool on the floor next to the bed. You can guess what happened next. Hearing that song again after all these years catapulted me back into a state of pure contentment, like when you know you are loved and everything in the world reminds you of that scene in the Wizard of Oz when the film goes from black and white to technicolor. And I have tears of remembered joy pooling in my eyes as I'm write this.

No wonder they use music so much over in the Memory Care building. If we are smart we'd all make ourselves a play list of the special music in our lives for when our brains start shorting out because they claim that our memories attached to music are the last thing to go when people get Alzheimer's and it can help us hold on to those memories. I know that to be true because music often blindsides me with an emotional response and a flashback. Usually instantly. No waiting around for two days like they did with Lady in Red and no embarrassing red cheeks when I finally figure out why that particular memory got buried a little deeper than so many others. ©

Until Next Wednesday.

 

                                       1985 original version

Wearing Masks and other Mandatory Ear Adornments

Before the pandemic April and October used to be my busiest months for yearly and bi-annual appointments for medical stuff and house and car maintenance. I liked getting it all condensed and out of the way so I wasn’t driving during winter snow storms or in the season of overheated cars and impatient drivers. With the stay-at-home orders in Michigan from March 26^th to staggered re-openings starting in June It’s been a long haul and now everyone is scrambling to get months’ worth of missed appointments back on the books. Even places that didn’t require appointments are doing so now in order to ensure social distancing. I called the eyeglass place, for example, to see if they were open and was shocked to learn I had to make an appointment a week in advance to pick out new frames.

We still have mandatory orders in place to wear masks and do our six foot social distancing when we are in public. And oh how important my ears have become to the point that I’m paranoid checking them every few minutes because I’ve discovered that taking off your mask can also send your hearing aids flying across a parking lot. Before I was able to get a haircut my ears also had to contend with a plastic headband holding my hair off my face in addition to their usual job of holding up my eyeglasses and having earrings sticking through them. It’s just too much junk coming together in one place! On the good side, I'm saving money on my Bert’s Bees Watermelon lip gloss because it hasn’t come out of my drawer much since masks became part of my wardrobe. 

I have five masks now. My first two were made by one of my Gathering Girls pals, delicate and cute floral patterns. Then I ordered two that literally came on a slow boat from China. Both have pockets for filters and one is black, the other is a black and white print. Finally my local grocery store started stocking them and I got a gray mask to match my hair and it's probably too thin to do any real good. With all those masks to choose from I still want another---one with a ventilation breathing valve which probably defends the whole purpose of wearing a mask in the first place. I’m a shallow mouth breather and I’m having trouble getting enough oxygen through any of the masks I own.

Eyelashes---I can’t find mine anymore to wear mascara and since I wear silver and black glasses with rhinestones on the bows no one looks past those to see my eyes anyway. I’ve always been obsessed, however, with my eyebrows and that obsession has been jacked up on steroids since masks became standard fare. I have one dark brown and black eyebrow and one white and brown brow and I never leave the house without painting a little color over my eyebrows to even them out. Aside from that oddity, in my teens I had a unibrow that I over plucked and am paying for now that I know the ‘rules’ for where I should have quit plucking. And have I mentioned that I have the classic thinning of the last third of my eyebrows due to my hypothyroidism? I have to pencil in an 1/8 of an inch at the center ends of my brows and fill in near the other ends or I feel naked. Eyebrows on, I'm good to go anywhere. I just wish I could wiggle them independently...learn the language of eyebrow flirting in the age of Covid-19. I just made that up but the language of eyebrows should be a thing.

I've had the prescription for new glasses for a few weeks but I was waiting until after I got my post-Covid-19 lock down haircut to pick out new frames. The frames I’m using now are nearly a decade old. The last two times I’ve needed new prescriptions I hated the frames available and I ended up getting my new prescriptions put in those old frames with the rhinestone bows. I wanted something flashy with a rainbow of colors. I still want that and if I can’t find them this time I’m going with big, horn-rimmed librarian glasses. You know the kind...the kind that hides your sexiness and when you free your hair from its ponytail and whip off your glasses guys swoon at your feet. Ya, I know, sometimes I forget I don’t have a ponytail and guys don’t swoon at the feet of septuagenarians. Who said dementia can’t be something to look forward to when you have a good imagination. And who are these goober guys in romance books who can't tell if a woman is sexy if she's wearing glasses? I'm guessing they're the sons of Clark Kent and Lois Lane?

As least I’m not as delusional as a man I saw at the grocery store this week. He was hooked up to an oxygen tank that he was pushing around in his cart. On his head was a red MAGA hat and he was wearing a t-shirt with a serpent in the middle surrounded by the words, “Don’t Tread on Me! Liberty or Death!” He was not wearing the state mandated mask and his angry resentment of his fellow shoppers who were wearing them was palatable. “Give me liberty or give me death.” He’s picking his poison and I just hope he's not spiking the punch of others like me as he invaded our six foot bubble of supposed safety. As author and columnist John Pavlovitz says, "A mask is a stupid hill to die on in America." ©

“… Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace.
The war is actually begun!
The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears
 the clash of resounding arms!
Our brethren are already in the field!
Why stand we here idle?
What is it that gentlemen wish?
What would they have?
 Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased
at the price of chains and slavery?
Forbid it, Almighty God!
I know not what course others may take;
 but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Sir Patrick Henry 1775 in his call to arms against the British.

Wandering Texas

My living room is one big souvenir box of our many vacations out West. In 1990 we went to Texas and came home with lots of great memories in addition to ‘stuff’ I’m now selling off. I wanted to attend a Book Lover’s Convention in San Antonio that year and Don was more than willing to go along. I was a member of the Romance Writers of America back then and the convention drew 600 ladies and a couple dozen men. Don loved being one of those guys at the book fair portion of the three day event and he was such a good sport. I’d given him an autograph book and a list of author’s tables where I wanted him to visit and he dutifully---probably gleefully---stood in lines while I went to workshops and lectures. He’d never read a romance book in his life, but he could talk the talk; he’d been the proof-reader for my bi-monthly book review newsletter for over a decade. It was a subscription publication that started out as a campaign against rape scenes is books labeled ‘romance' and it grew into a 28 page “newsletter” by the time I had to give it up to make time to share-care my dad.

Wandering the back roads of Texas before and after those days in San Antonio was an eye-opener. We came back knowing that although Affirmative Action seemed to have out-grown its usefulness in Michigan that sure wasn’t the case in Texas. For example, in a town too small for a traffic light we were in a store waiting to pay for something when a siren started blasting. Don asked the shop owner, a man in his mid-forties, what the siren was for and the man laughed and answered: "That’s the siren for the volunteer fire department. One blast for the white side of Main Street, two blasts for the businesses on Main Street and three blasts for the black side of Main Street. That one’s three blasts and no one is going to answer that one.” There was no shame in that admission, no hint that there was anything but delight in the man’s voice. Don and I looked at each other, set our would-be purchase down and walked out.

But we met some great people in Texas, too. One couple who befriended us had invited us to a party and to this day I regret being too chicken or polite or stupid to accept their offer. It was a party for Ann Richards who was elected the governor of Texas the following month. We’d never heard of her before, didn’t know how outrageous and dynamic she was. Didn’t know how important she’d become to the Democratic Party in later years. But I can image what would have happened if Don and Ann had gotten the chance to swap stories. He could out-story anyone and just the thought of those two together makes me grin. 

Texas was full of colorful character back then. Late one afternoon we ran into a guy who owned an antique store and he had a steer head scull on the porch that Don wanted to buy. The guy wouldn’t sell it to him but he said, “Come back tomorrow. I’ve got twenty-five more coming in the morning.” “If you’ve got more coming tomorrow,” Don replied, “why won’t you sell me that one today?” “I can’t”, the guy answered, “if I sell that one, I won’t have any left until tomorrow.” Around and around they went and we left without a bleached-out scull. Up here in Michigan, if you have a customer with cash in hand, you take it. We did get a steer head in our travels that year, probably a slander house special and it still hangs in the living room today. 

Another interesting encounter we had happened when we’d stumbled into a bar full of Native Americans one Saturday night while trying to find a place to get a thermos filled. All I can say is I was glad there was a BIG guy there wearing a badge. He stuck to us like glue until we got our business done and was out of the place. At one point when one of the locals challenged Don to a game of pool the big guy answered for Don that we were just passing through. Under his breath he was probably adding, “just a couple of dumb-ass tourists who think they’re Roy Roger and Dale Evans.’

From the back roads of Texas we picked up a couple of phrases that became part of our permanent vocabularies. One of those phrases we heard repeated by five-six guys was, “I’m a multi-millionaire, you know.” Over the years as Don and I would reminisce about wandering Texas those words would come bubbling out of our mouths. Another phrase we came home with was, “Don’t ever start buying food. Once you start, you’ll never stop!” We had run into a woman picking through garbage cans one night while walking the dog. She liked us and gifted us with that little bit of philosophy and many times over the years when we’d be going into a grocery store, one of us would say, “Muriel was right. Once you start buying food, you can’t stop.” We heard the next day that Muriel owned half the closed-up stores in that tiny town where she ate out of the garbage cans.  

When you go off the beaten tracks of any state you come home with quirky stories to tell and that's the way we always traveled. ©

Photo: That's my living room with cow's scull mixed in with the art work.