Flower is from the Middle English “flour,” which referred to both the ground grain and the reproductive structure in plants, before splitting off in the 17th century. It comes originally from the Latin name of the Italian goddess of flowers, Flora. The early word for flower in English was “blossom,” though it now refers to flowers only of fruit trees.
There’s a lot to be said about one’s ability to care for flowers and plants, in general, and, without judgment, regarding an inability to do the same. The flowering of plants and blossoming of fruit trees are tangible, delicate, and colorfully choral depictions of nature’s response to their tending. It is as if they are jubilant over nature’s care received; oftentimes, too, over human interactions tending to their care hand in hand with nature.
My 97-year-old father speaks passionately about flowers, at times becoming visibly giddy. He and his wife enjoy tending to the flowering plants within their yard. He often will count the number of flowers within their garden patch and then have me do the same, comparing our count. During our outings, often he’ll exuberantly count the flowering crape myrtle trees we pass.
From time to time he tells a new story; more often, he tells the same story, not recalling that he shares these daily, sometimes minutes apart. Alzheimer’s will do this to a person. Whether new to me or him, I do appreciate hearing these tales, learning from them of the human persona and of human nature, from his perspective, when reflecting on his memories shared, gleaning from his experiences and reflections as he is now very introspective and outward-looking, alike.
Though not perfect in every sense, his reflective perspective on life and on all things beautiful in nature, including the cycle of our transient, island home, provide a clear backdrop on which to reflect and cast my gaze as I attempt to focus on the blurry images of life reeling before me as every moment in time is tethered to our past and the future before us.
My father speaks romantically of the enclosed flower garden tended by his older sister, Adrianna, as if it brings life to his soul even to this day. This garden stands in front of their two-room house, situated within sugarcane land in Puerto Rico, a house owned by The Company yet given to them as a dwelling place in exchange for labor. This garden, Adrianna’s labor of love, afforded needed beauty to the forefront of their meager, temporal home.
He speaks poetically of Azucena, their one brown cow, named after the beautiful flower that has become known as the Madonna Lilly, whom he would take to pasture (they were allowed to graze one cow per household on The Company’s land) and who would lead the way back home each evening when he’d “fetch her from the grazing land,” still reminiscing of being “saluted” by the tipping of the hat from all the country men, there and back, just as he habitually salutes each stranger as we now walk most evenings in the park.
As the evenings give way to a cool, gentle breeze, he shares memories of tending to the one who cared for him, the father who welcomed him into their meager existence when leaving his aunts home after his mother’s untimely death. He recalls how Adrianna, after moving to the The States, routinely sent money to their father after beginning her work in The Factory. He shares how, when enlisting into the military, he set his monthly payroll to have a portion sent to his father.
Tending flowers is all encompassing. Tending flowers requires selecting the “right” spot with the “right” amount of sunlight dependent upon the plant, tending the soil, watering, harvesting the seeds, storing seed for the next planting season, and just as importantly, admiring and critiquing one’s work toward creation.
This, God did, too. In creation, God reflects on the wonder after each day’s work. God found the “right” spot for humanity to exist in harmony with creation; God instructed Adam and Eve to do likewise, to manage the land, its resources, the creatures, all in a way that would prove both resourceful and productive in their care for all things. Above all, we learn from early humans that they admired the beauty of creation, even when tempted to overstep set boundaries put in place for them in the story of the “forbidden fruit.”
Tending flowers may look differently across cultural and generational variances, as differently as the caring of the most beautiful of flowers (children, the elderly and the disabled) varies across cultural norms and times (see links for additional resources). One can favor one system over another, but I’m reminded that, regardless of socially accepted practices for caring for one’s own, even when health declines and temperaments sway to exotic extremes, care nonetheless. When the care includes any part of a wide array of societal and family assistance, recall that these systems are in place to aid and supplement, not as a replacement of one’s own tending care.
In my yard there exists a planter ingrown with a variety of leafy plants left “to be” from previous growing seasons. Potted aside these each year is a new planting for the current season, all fitted, knit together in some sort of strange bond that I find sort of appealing. From a certain angle, one can see the planted offspring of a Rose of Sharon far in the background, transplanted from my father’s yard, the original planted by my late mom.
When I water these, I trust that growth and beauty will continue to develop, knowing I will be surprised when old plants, from time to time, from year to year, sporadically bloom. When I walk with my dad during the cool evenings these hot summer days, I’m reminded that, in a sense, I’m tending to and watering our relationship, as he, too, in a sense, is tilling my soil. New life is given to memories as he reflects on old experiences all while not remembering if we went for coffee just 20 minutes prior. This, too, is part of life’s cycle.
There exists this gentle curvature in time within our temporal existence when, as the speaker portrays in Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way,”[2] where one’s being coexists perfectly with cultivated memories knit together with the present life and tethered, too, to one’s future existence and hope.
These reeling, blurry images of life are cast on a clear backdrop of the finest embroidered tapestry knitted once, yet mended in peace with gentle three-twilled needlework of the Spirit. On this tapestry, images past and present give way to our future, a future clearly perfected in union with God and our human family through Christ Jesus our Lord. And we, in our own tending of flowers, will join with God’s voice in giddy excitement, exclaiming in unison on that day, “It is good.”
Additional Resources:
- National Council on Disability
- National Alzheimer’s and Dementia Resource Center
- Health and Human Services, Program for Older Adults
- The National Library of Congress, Resources for Aging Adults and Their Families