On the usefulness of flowers

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted a home filled with flowers. And for a long time, I thought that it made me high-maintenance (which isn't always necessarily a bad thing and most of the time is an excuse for partners to be lazy and selfish, but that's a whole other can of worms), so I tried to pinpoint what it was about flowers that seemed to speak, as it were, my language. To see if I could fix my obsession.

Is it because my dad would go into our garden regularly and cut fresh flowers to put on my mom's desk? Is it because in high school, when he knew I was having a rough week, he would surprise me with bouquets at the kitchen table? Is it because the most popular girls in school always had flowers delivered to their desks on Valentine's Day, from secret and sometimes not-so-secret admirers?

See, the more I thought about it, the more it felt like everything about me adds up to flowers on the windowsill, the kitchen counters, the bedside table. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my insatiable desire to have a home filled with flowers is not so much about flowers symbolizing feminine normalcy as it is about flowers bringing life to a place.

I know some people think that flowers are pointless, that it's counter-productive to essentially kill something for the purpose of making something else prettier, but I'm not so sure. I see flowers and I think about life, in all its stages. I think about walks through parks and gardens and down to the neighborhood grocery store. I think about brightening that which is somber with that which is brilliant. I think that creating an indoors that incorporates the outdoors is not only nice, but that it is also purposeful, because we are creating spaces that allow us to breathe more deeply.

There are three bunches of flowers in our apartment right now; one fake, a leftover decoration from our wedding, the other two gifts from Stephen. When I see them, I don't just see romance and pursuit and all the too-cheesy things we so often associate with flowers. I see myself, reflected in each petal, full of life, flourishing and blossoming and sometimes, for a day or two, wilting.

Flowers are more than just tokens of appreciation. They're tokens of life. So I'm giving myself over, wholeheartedly, to this wish for a home filled with flowers. Because I want our home to always, always, always be filled with life.