I buy flowers, not plants.
Mornings usually wear the same shade of yellow- or pink, depending on when my eyes swollen shut with sleep decide to open up again. I salvage the slow unfurling of my limbs, the first kiss between the soles of my feet and the hard wood floors, the white walls of my apartment now awash with golden rays of sunshine.
There are things that catch you by surprise and rapture your breath. My favorite flower, a gladiolus, is one of those things. Last week, I made my way down to the farmers market, fighting of the sticky sweet summer air and the little insects it brings with it. Before I moved to America, sterilized grocery environments were not the norm. I had been on one too many trips to the local market with my mother in Nigeria, when I finally realized that staying in the shelter of the car, far away from raw meat and insects was the best idea. I had gone on a two year no meat strike at the age of seven and in hindsight, I think it had everything to do with my experience at the markets. American farmer’s markets on the other hand seem to have found the perfect balance between taking out the sterile industrialized nature of your local walmart (ew) and the raw reality I often faced at Nigerian markets.
So, here I am, a big-city-yoga-pants- wearing, organic-buying-girl *eye roll* spending my sunny Saturday morning going to the Farmers Market. Quick Caveat: White America has spent so long taking ethnic practices and re-branding them to seem like wholistic practices invented just by them. Yoga has become an extremely white-washed space, organic practices are essentially what ethnic households have been practicing for CENTURIES with reusable and recyclable materials, and now things I practiced my whole life are being rebranded to me in a more ‘ethical’ package for tonnes more money. Something I’d love to write about in a future post. Now, back to the farmer’s market. My eyes are immediately drawn to the biggest flower stand I have seen in my whole life, and right in front of them are Gladioli! Exactly a year ago, I stumbled open this beauty of a flower and have never found them again so you can imagine how my heart leapt with joy.
I swept up ten stems of those babies and promptly set them up on my marble coffee table in my quaint studio apartment, they quickly became the center of the room. So, this morning sitting on my couch enjoying my yoghurt and granola breakfast I couldn’t help but stare at them. Just me and my flowers, no music, no tv- just us. And then it dawned on me: I buy flowers not plants!
Now you’re probably wondering, what is the significance of my purchasing habits? Surely, they’re just flowers right? No. According to the thought process that unfolded in my neural pathways, it means I am afraid of commitment *gasp*.
Flowers are beautiful, short lived and a financial/emotional investment just like the men I date. Over the past year dating, I have found a series of short term relationships that were beautiful and passionate. Flowers are here today and gone in three days- a week if you’re lucky; men are here today and gone in five dates- if you’re lucky.
My favorite short term relationship happened while I was shooting for Chicago magazine. We had met on New Years Eve and quickly fallen into an introspective romance. I was raw, and vulnerable about many things I wanted to grow from about myself. He was charming, always ready to celebrate my wins, very stylish and a plant lover. I remember wrapping my three day shoot of the magazine and he had planned a date at my favorite Mediterranean restaurant in town. We celebrated wins and I remember not bearing to have the table between us so I had asked him to squeeze in beside me as we ate dessert. I was all in.
As romance rises, schedules busy and energies wane. By February we were sitting across from each other on a late night dinner, after seeing a niche movie at an art theatre in town, exhausted. Here we were two balls of energy, spinning in our own orbits and never really able to make both worlds collide. I, however, was open to making it work and brought up the dreaded V word: valentines. We made plans for the day before valentines because his schedule didn’t align and I should’ve know then and there that it wasn’t written in the stars.
Two days before Valentines day I get a late night phone call from Mr. WickerPark. Unlike his devoted dedication to his plants, he was simply not ready to give the same “attention” to me.
“I don’t think I am able to give the level of attention you deserve/desire right now”. The words formed like stone in the bottom of my stomach and sat there for two days. Too stunned to say anything, I spit out the last few words I was able to find in what I was sensing would be our last conversation. He told me he needed a month for his schedule to calm down and then he would be open to seeing where things went. The already frigid February, became colder. My heart held on steady to the hopes that with March passing, April would thaw his heart and we would be right back in the introspective romance I once loved.
April never came.
March was an arbitrary period of time.
And hope slowly faltered away like the petals of my flowers, first drooping then falling off. I hurt.
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