Please send flowers

Maybe it has to do with waiting for the sunrise; this morning from my shack out back; the copper sky over tarnished headlands; the expanse of horizon unfolding to the day. A sky that reaches beyond the arc of earth, and with open arms it greets the sun.

I’ll bet that if I could beam myself straight up right now, say to 2,000 feet, I could watch as the sun floods the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the sun now awoken from the salt, sea and stories of the eastern night. I’ll bet I could see the supply boat destined for the treeshaven Magdalen Islands, while at the same time spotting our own Glenora traverse in full flight, bound for the shaggy Adolphustown shore.

The rise of the sun beckons as the snowdrops and hyacinths open to the spring of day; the warmth of new. I watch as the web of hawthorn and bramble bush and decrepit chokecherry drift in the morning light, untethered from groggy cornfields still anchored in winter. And this is where the flower part comes in. The hedgerows as bouquets and wreaths and vases of cut flowers. The vases I remember placed on tabletops in workers’ houses in villages in Holland. How flowers in bunches were cradled home in the arms of men and women, young and old. Of flowers in carrying baskets at marketplaces and in shopping carts and bicycle carriers. Flowers everywhere.

It was then that I learned the lesson of the days. How fresh flowers in the most barren of spaces become the sunrise. How we give thanks and love and share in joy and in pain with a fistful of sunrise: sunrises in a splatter of bronze and mulberry and azure blue, heralding in dwarf size and giant, to fit each moment. I began then, to habit myself with even the smallest of handfuls of flowers nearby in a vase.

I remember, in another lifetime when I would drop into a small flower shop in the rural east coast. The flower lady, as I called her, had become accustomed to my visits: accustomed to my small request for a handful of flowers, un-fancied and unpredictable in their mix for no ceremony other than their welcomed message, carefully plunked as they were into a large mason jar on the kitchen counter in my home at the time. One day, as she handed me my purchase, she turned and said “Interesting how a large part of my business is flowers for funerals. Reminds me how we often will spend large amounts for flowers for the departed.” She glanced away. “Seldom do we make a habit of a handful of flowers for those we care about while they are living.”

The sun has crested above the far stand of maple trees. The chickadees and the cardinals grace the sky. I set down my notebook on the small table at my side. Alone. But I am not alone because I sense the story of the ages, how the Romans had roses upon roses in their homes, especially at meal time: when the high fragrance gave meaning to that time of day. It was the ‘hour of rose.’ Or how, for the Buddhists, the peony is considered the king of flowers. For me, a handful of sunrise is a bouquet for an overcast day.