Buying flowers

   This morning I stopped at Kroger to grab some flowers for two work friends: one has a new desk, the other has a new lease on life.
   I spent 20 minutes hesitating in front of this display and that display, picking dripping things up and putting them back, considering white orchids, speckled orchids, potted tulips, unfurled tulips in glass forcing jars, still furled tulips, pencil-thin roses and blousey ornamental cabbage leaves, small baskets, moss covered baskets ...
   Something was wrong with most all of them, a wilted blossom, a spotty leaf, or they seemed too frilly for the guy, too pedestrian for the woman. Finally I settled on a fistful of bright sunflowers for them both.
   While I was checking out I noticed the time.
   I spent far, far more time than I put into selecting the flowers I pick up to decorate Mom's room.
   Every week I run in, grab something for her room, something bright that looks likely to last a week, and then I run out. If there's a blue thing in a short vase, that's the one.

   Every so often one of my sisters who live far away overnights a box of thoughtfully chosen blooms. One time it was miniature dusky lavender roses from a plant Mom gave her years ago. Fragrant. Often it's Stargazer lilies or pristine white blooms of various species and various heights.
   She wraps the stems in wet paper towels and covers that with plastic grocery bags. She or her daughter carries them on the bus to the post office.

   Every so often another sister who lives even farther away sends something spectacular — a dried flower wreath in the shape of a heart, wonderfully preserved in muted pinks and lavenders and pale, dusty greens, or a confection of prettiness made by a florist in North Little Rock that really does things up well.

   Occasionally the brothers or their wives have a display delivered — a basket chosen for brightness and impact, crying "We remember you!" florally.

   We give her flowers because Mom was a student of growing things and an ardently uncritical appreciator, a universal appreciator, always planting and weeding and despairing over the plants and the weeds. She had a colossal collection of strappy mother-in-law's tongue; she had overgrown pots of amaryllis, a pineapple that made a baby pineapple, a 10-foot tall spindle of Norfolk pine she kept meaning to lop short.
   When I was young she dragged a pot of leggy pothos (Devil's ivy) from Virginia to Texas. We children had to wipe its dusty leaves as one of our many, many chores. And I remember a similarly sad but venerable pot of wandering Jew that kicked the bucket somewhere in Texas.
   She would exclaim "Ooo!" when anyone pointed out any plant to her, whether it was noteworthy or not. Her window sills were critical care wards where pallid clippings languished in green slimed juice glasses. "Don't throw that out, we can root it!"
   Among my earliest memories of our relationship, I bring her tributes of flowers from the yard — once a shoebox packed with cloyingly sweet, stemless clippings of bridal veil — and she generously coos over them before packing their miserable tag-ends into juice glasses.

    I am throwing money at flowers, and I am bringing the flowers to her room. If I slowed down to try to pick out flowers for her, I would never get out of that store.