“To truly know someone you must spend one thousand days with them.”
I’ve spent several thousand days with myself now, and I still hardly know her at all.
One of my favorite activities at the pool is to make tiny whirlpools. I’ll stand still in the water and open my fingers, then bring my hand straight down. Left behind in the trail of my hand will be a miniature maelstrom, dragging whatever happens to be nearby down to where its spiral waters end. I can pretend that I am a vengeful sea goddess; the pool is my realm, and on my whim those unfortunate enough to be nearby are sucked to a watery death.
“Bring me the scissors,” Mother calls out from the garden. I run down the stairs to oblige. Minutes later she comes in carrying a bundle of flowers, flowers flamboyantly pink and blue, content with the knowledge that they are safe, safely fresh, at least for now. She grabs the vase. One last stem from the previous bundle stands halfheartedly inside, half of the blooms on top wilted, the other half struggling against death to plod on with their show. Mother takes it out and prepares to toss it aside.
“Wait,” I cry. “It’s not done yet. Can’t we keep it in the vase until it is?”
Mother smiles, that “how cute and naive my child is” smile that I have come to know so well, that she still uses even though it’s been almost seventeen years and only one more will make me legally an adult. “It’s time to make way for the new,” she says, and tosses the old flowers out. “Besides,” she adds as she places the new ones in the vase, “we’ve already kept it for long enough. At some florists’ they toss out flowers fresher than these.”
Perhaps so, I think as I glance at the dying flowers in the trash. But that doesn’t make it right for us to treat them this way.
