Evening Rose

EVENING ROSE

I recently told my dad about a situation that had upset me. No, angered me. "I'll think I'll just quit!" My dad's sage advice was "Don't go cutting off your nose to spite your face!" 
"I won't Dad." Funny thing, language. Colloquialisms. We all have them. My Dad is full of them passed on generationally. For instance, when I told my dad I was going to be paid for my writing, "Not much, Dad, but..." My Dad's reply, "Well, it's better than a sharp stick in the eye!" and judging from the scar on my father's cheek just below is left eye I suspect he knows of what he speaks.

Communication. It is a wonderful, maddening, confusing thing.

After a particularly frustrating conversation pock-marked with misunderstandings between myself and the parent of a student one late afternoon, I went home feeling a little down. I decided that a cheap glass of wine and a bubble bath might be "just the thing." I don't normally take bubble baths. A healthy dose of adult ADD doesn't generally allow for such a leisurely indulgence (waste of time). I searched through the back of the bathroom towel cabinet and found an old bottle of Evening rose foaming bubble bath. I blew the dust off of the lid and poured. I perched on the edge of the tub and watched the bubbles multiply and float. I entered gingerly and sank slowly. I closed my eyes and listened as James told me how he had returned to Carolina in his mind again and breathed deeply. Inhale red rose. Exhale blue mood. Inhale red rose. Exhale blue mood. I was surprised at how much I liked the fragrance. I had not really been around roses much other than the yearly trip to the botanical gardens or the floral section of my local Wal Mart. my mother had been allergic to roses so carnations were the flower of our house. Red tipped and, in later years, presented from an adoring grandson. I began to think about my mother. When she was twenty nine and we four, my two brothers, myself and my sister were small, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. In the sixties this was a certain death sentence. We were not allowed to visit her in her hospital room but rather my father or grandparents would slowly drive past the hospital and point to the window beyond which she lay fighting. Then I remember quite vividly the afternoon that my father returned home with a single red rose my mother had sent for me to press in my bible.I did not understand why and it was not until years later that I realized the rose was to be a remembrance.

With the scent of Evening Rose still wafting about my damp hair and filling my nostrils, I suddenly opened my eyes, 'A single red rose." But wait a minute. That makes no sense. Why would my mother, who was incredibly allergic to roses, have had them in her hospital room and then....I realize. She wasn't. My mother was not allergic to roses. She didn't like having roses around because they smelled to her of pain and fear and baited breath death. It was easier to say "No thank you, I am allergic" to roses then to relate the tale of the battle she had waged on the fourth floor of a hospital. Much easier to say "No thanks." to a rose being offered then to explain that when death came to call that day in that tiny dark room she said "No thank you. Not today." 

I cry for a bit and I smile for a bit. Amazed that it took be forty years to figure it out and grateful for a husband who didn't pay attention when I said years ago "If you are going to buy me any body products for my birthday, don't get rose scented. I don't like the smell."

Epiphanies come in small doses and in strange places and occasionally from the bubbles brought forth from a dime store bottle of Evening Rose.

Communication. Language. It's amazing we understand each other at all. For instance, isn't it funny how a simple phrase like "Stop and smell the roses" can mean something so entirely different to each of us.