Those Chrysanthemums My Mother Wouldn’t Love
In joy and in sadness, flowers are our friends
Thanks to Dr. Preeti Singh, I unlocked a memory from my adolescence.
When she offered a prompt on flowers, I immediately thought I would participate in writing an article.
It usually happens any time she proposes different topics about nature. I get excited. On some occasions, I succeed to write and participate. I’m too late on some others, and I find myself out of setting by publishing a piece when all other writers have completed the prompt round.
This time I jumped for joy, for about ten seconds. Then I was immediately saddened, as a memory came up to me, and I didn’t like it at all. But, I tell you, at my age, and after all the analysis of my past I went through, this was something I could bear. I thought a bit longer, though, about whether to share it or not. After all, I should include other people in this memoir, and I don’t like to put them in a bad light.
I’ll try to be as delicate as possible and tell you my story on a flower challenge of the past, involving myself and my parents.
During a couple of the three months vacations we used to spend in the mountains, there were many summer activities organized by the local township. We usually took place in many of them, to enjoy ourselves while doing sports, playing instruments, painting, and walking around.
The flowers’ challenge was a floral composition my mum always wanted to participate in. It wasn’t a big thing, just a competition about creating a flower vase on a green sponge with fresh flowers. Something which sounds cool and relaxing, right?
It was, in fact, with an exception: the year in which she received chrysanthemums as her fresh flowers to use for the creation. OMG! A tragedy under an open blue sky!
“They are the flowers of the dead!”- she exclaimed almost crying. She was back home, my dad trying to calm her down, the competition already on starting time, and another really big unplanned event waiting for her in the bathroom.
I was having my first period.
My dad went to call her at the show biz, hoping she could manage the situation better than he would. Wrong decision! She was angry, and I was interrupting her moment of vainglorious challenge with flowers. She wouldn’t bother to take care of my problem other than passing me a carefree…absorbent, without instructions. I didn’t have a precise idea of how to use it and was in a kind of shock for the event we hadn’t talked about clearly.
My father came to help with instructions from outside the bathroom door.
She had to go back to the competition, yelling that was the last time she would bother to participate. Her offense was enormous.
Chrysanthemums look good to me. I couldn’t stand all the scandals she made. Nor the priority she gave to herself and not to me in the particular once-in-life signing point into adult femininity I was living in.
After the floral event was over, she kind of apologized to me. Never mind, I thought, I know how much it mattered to you. Another good occasion missed on how to show your love to me.
Flowers are beautiful, also chrysanthemums.
Thank you to all writers proposing their experiences of life through these wonderful nature prompts by Dr. Preeti Singh on Reciprocal.
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