A House Built of Flowers

Ours is a small house built mostly of glass and light, of bright tones and books, and, when it is possible, with flowers. Flowers dragged in from the garden outside—blue heads of hydrangea, blooming stalks of peach iris, dozens of glads in two dozen colors, a stem from the red bud, a bright plume of lilac. Flowers bought and arranged in the Ikebana patterns I have learned—in half-moons, in swish plates, in rising wooden circles. Flowers tucked in with the groceries.

But this past winter of cold and dark I somehow neglected the flowers. I was being...economical, perhaps. Rational and wise thinking. I was testing out the small unsentimental fraction of me and seeing if I liked her.

I didn't. I missed those blooms and their unpredictability. I missed the way they turned toward the sun to remind me it was there.

Friday it was warm enough to walk to the Farmer's Market, and I had friends due in the next day. I shucked the unsentimental me and went off buying and didn't stop until I'd reached the flower stand, where anemones of historic proportions held their heads high on straw-like stems.

"I can't help it," I told the lady. "I'm taking some of them home."

"Of course you are," she said.