A Rose In Any Other Hands

On Valentine's Day (aeons ago now) I bought flowers for the two loveliest ladies in my life: a rose for Sara and a carnation for Gwendolyn. Gwendolyn especially loves to sniff anything that looks like a flower (including pictures of shamrocks in board books), so she savored the gift perhaps more than most toddlers would. After a time, however, despite their setting in water and full light, the flowers reached the point at which they testified less to the triumph of love than to the sad end of all biology. So I determined to send the sagging flora to the compost pile. That was the moment Gwendolyn decided she wanted the rose. After two weeks of fending her off from the thorn-adorned stem, I gave her full authority now over the spent blossom. She wielded her executive power with impunity. I don't know that she's had exposure to the game of "he loves me, he loves me not," but one could be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that she had: Or maybe she was preparing someday to be the flower girl in a wedding. Either way, she discovered that when the petals are gone, so is the rose. ~ emrys