A Hibiscus In My Hair

Should I, or should I not, wear it?

It was a Sunday in 2008 and I was getting dressed for church. I planned to wear a bright (I kid you not) pink dress I bought the previous year from the Philippines. Whenever I wore it, I felt like I was back in the tropics again.

It needed just one little accessory: a hibiscus flower tucked behind my ear.

But I couldn’t work up the courage to do it. I was worried I was going to look silly.

Head above shoulders, my favorite flower to photograph when traveling is the hibiscus. In the Philippines, we call it the gumamela. Despite the fact that it doesn’t have a strong scent, it has a showy stigma (the long, proboscis-like reproductive organ). Its beauty is simply hard to ignore.

I love the hibiscus so much, I once had an artist friend include it, tucked behind my ear, in my portrait as a seafaring mermaid.

Not only that, but as I looked through my photo collection for this article, I realized I have this habit of taking hibiscus photos as I’ve traveled the world.

I took this one in Cuba.

I took the one below in Maui, Hawaii. Note how big the flower is, compared to my hand.

Early in my marriage, I was lucky enough to get to tag along to Puerto Rico when my husband attended a veterinary conference. For nearly a week, we stayed at a very nice resort. Utah was still in the throes of cold spring weather, and Puerto Rico thawed me out to the core.

You stay a while in the tropics, one begins to lose one’s inhibitions. Something to do with the hotter temperature, I guess. I stopped blow drying my hair and let it go frizzy. I stopped for coconut impulsively outside the resort. I found a pretty pink flower clip and tucked it behind my ear, as I sipped the coconut juice.

On the last leg of the return journey from Puerto Rico to Utah, my tropic high began to fade. I felt silly, wearing a flower in my hair. I cried as the plane descended, because I felt the magic of the tropics wearing off. Worse, I discovered I lost the clip somewhere between the plane and baggage claim.

It was okay. Somehow, wearing an accessory like a tropical flower behind your ear feels out of place in the desert landscape of Utah.

Fast forward to that Sunday I was getting dressed for church.

I had found a hibiscus flower at a party store called Zurcher’s. It was actually a napkin holder. I cut the long stem that you’d wrap around a napkin and held it up to my hair. The flower matched my dress perfectly.

It was time to go. With trembling fingers, I attached the flower on my hair with a hairpin.

There. Very tropical. Very me. I told myself it’s okay. Most people were going to see the half of my head without the flower and it won’t be very noticeable. As we are getting out of the car at the church parking lot, my son (who had shopped at Zurcher’s with me) asked, “Mom, is that a napkin holder?”

“Er, yes,” I replied, red-faced.

I felt I was committing a sin by wearing something unorthodox to church. Still, I resisted the urge to take it off. A couple of ladies complimented me.

My friend Debbie tapped me on the shoulder just before our worship service. “The flower in your hair,” she said, “how beautiful.”

I wanted to tell her it made me feel more tropical, that it made me happy, that it brought me back to the Philippines. I wanted to tell her that whenever I see women wear flowers in their hair, I never think they are silly; I think they are brave and are having more fun than the rest of us. That I thought about doing it all the time, but I had never worked up the courage to do it.

Until that Sunday.

But there was no time to chat, the meeting was starting. I touched the flower in my hair and replied, simply, “Thanks.”

Thank you for reading!

Here are a couple of articles (and their floral photos) that caught my eye in Michele Maize’s April Monthly Challenge.

I could relate to Marianne O’s fascination for Hong Kong’s national flower.

My fellow Filipina, Osan Fernando, shares a wonderful story and beautiful photos of Japan’s cherry blossoms, which is on my travel bucket list.

My book, Antarctica: A Travel Journal, which features my favorite Antarctic photos along with my daily journal entries, is now out. Watch my short travel clips on my Youtube channel.

Check out my novels and my quick guides to writing and publishing fast for profit.

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