(This is Why) You Don't Bring Me Flowers

One thing not many people know about me is that I love flowers. Maybe I like them so much because I get them so infrequently, but when I have been lucky enough, they just about make my year. Seriously. I have been sent flowers exactly two times in my life. The first time was when I was in college, came back to my room and found that one of my guy friends had left them for me on my desk as a thank you for helping him with a job. He'd gotten the job about six months earlier, but in the note - which of course duh I still have - he wrote that it was not only for the job, but for just being, well, me. You don't forget things like that. The second time I got flowers was when a friend's family sent me them after I helped them get some tickets to a game a few summers ago. It was an unexpected very nice gesture. Maybe that's the whole key about flowers, is that it's a surprise and a gesture just intended to make you happy. I love that.

Anyway, I didn't just get flowers or anything and no, I'm not expecting any flowers any time soon, but I did have to order someone else flowers this weekend and so I was thinking about how nice it is to receive them. Sadly, this time, it was a sympathy delivery, but it still made me think good things and remember the flowers I once got, so I figured I'd start this post with something uplifting. Because my flower delivery experience... not so uplifting (and that's not even because they were a sympathy bouquet). Allow me to explain.

While I have received flowers only two times, I don't think I should really complain because in truth, I had only sent flowers once before this. I sent them to one of my mom's friends, who was basically like a second mom to me, on the day that she found out she was officially in remission. I was in college at the time and I think I did the whole 1800flowers thing because it was out of state, and it was pretty simple to go through the pictures and pick a bouquet. I didn't really want to do 1800flowers because they just pick a random florist in the area and all, and I know a few places. So I went online and started at the top of the line. That's when I realized... flowers are freakin expensive! That's one reason why I don't get them very often, probably. They're like $50 for a decent bouquet. The nice ones run about $95... at least on this very fancy site. I then decided, no, we don't need THIS top of the line. So then I thought, I don't really know what I'm looking at or ordering anyway, so I should probably just go to a store. I realized there was a flower store on my way somewhere else Saturday, so I was all set.

Or so I thought, until I met Rita.

Rita was putting together a bouquet when I first arrived at the shop that looked like a cross between something my Aunt Diane, a purple freak fanatic, and a five year old would put together. Not the best start.

"Would you like to order some flowers for a beloved?" was her opening line to me. Yup. Would I like to order some flowers for my beloved.

"Umm... no..."

"So then what are you here for?" Rita asked. Still pretty cheerful.

"I'd like to order some flowers for a sympathy bouquet."

She looked confused. In her defense, I thought maybe I had said the name wrong or something. I mean, I had only ordered flowers once, and I think I'd been in a flower shop, like, never, so maybe I wasn't using the right terminology.

"I need to send flowers to someone whose father died."

"Ohhh," she said. "Well, this is a pretty busy week."

"With Valentine's Day?"

"No, that's not this week. That's next week."

"Oh. So then... this week?"

"Well, this week we have to get ready for Valentine's Day."

Okay. Sometimes I legitimately wonder where I am.

I decided to just go with it and soldier on. "I bet. Well, I'm looking to have these flowers delivered either Monday or Tuesday. Is that possible?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Well, it depends on whether you want them delivered Monday or Tuesday." I swear, Rita said this with a straight face. This Rita. My grandmother was a Rita. I sort of imagined the two of them having this conversation instead of me and Rita. Probably would've gone on about 20 extra hours. But anyway.

"Either, is what I was saying. If you can deliver them Monday, I'd like them to get there Monday. If you can't, then my second choice would be Tuesday."

"Well, which do you want?"

Seriously? Seriously, Rita? Really? She kept playing with this stupid mess of purple flowers, just rearranging the shit out of them.

"Monday."

"Okay. Let me see if I can do that. Can you hold these for me so they don't all come apart? I been working on them all morning."

Really.

"Sure. Do you have other florists helping you?" I asked. "Like someone who can maybe put together my arrangement so you don't have to stress about it?"

"No, I wish. Man, Brian, I keep telling him, he's got to get me some help around here. But he keeps saying, 'No Rita, no, you can do it, baby' and I keep trying to do it. But at the end of the day, if he wants the quality of the product to stay where it is" - she nods towards the explosion I'm holding - "then I got to get some help. But let me check here about Monday."

She clicked through a bunch of things and nodded. "Looks like we can do Monday afternoon. That work?"

"Great," I said. I was actually starting to semi-hope they were booked with Valentine's stuff, even a week early, and that I'd have to find someone who wasn't on purple crack to make the arrangement.

"So what kind of arrangement you looking at again? Birthday? For your dad?"

"Umm no," I said. "Sympathy arrangement, for a woman I work with, her father passed away."

"Oh. So not a birthday thing then."

"No, definitely not. Something... understated."

"Something not showy?"

"Right."

"Okay. So you thinking then... maybe some blues? Like she got the blues cause her dad died?"

You know, I should pause here. Because it was at this distinct moment that I realized, shit, I have to write about this. Right after that line. I knew, Rita had to be a Shut Me Up character. Just had to be. No matter if she pulled it together and acted absolutely normal from here on out, Rita was a story.

"Well, I was looking online and it seems like white is more of the sympathy direction."

"White is really, really boring."

I thought about this for a moment. As I was considering this, a girl named Olivia turned around from her spot arranging plants in the store. "You know, I went to two wakes this week. Yeah, really tough week for me... one was really sad, one wasn't so bad. But anyway, it was white overload. I think a little color might make someone feel a little better. Especially if these are going to this lady's home. You're sending them to make her a little happier, right?"

Olivia made some sense to me. She seemed pretty nice, and she seemed normal-ish.

"Maybe some light pinks or something... " I conceded.

"Well, I'm a fan of purple, as you can see," said Rita. "So do you like purple?"

I have to give myself credit, because I thought pretty quickly here. "I do," I said, "but my friend doesn't really like bold colors. Definitely more pastels."

"Okay. So I'll put down 'boring but not dead' on the notes section," Rita said helpfully.

"Umm, okay... maybe classic? Or pretty?" I tried helpfully.

"Pretty is dependable on the eyes of the beholder," she said. Pretty is dependable on the eyes of the beholder.

"That sounds true," I said, truthfully. "I think just something simple, is what I'm trying to say."

"Got it," Rita said. She took down the details and then told me the total. "It's $20 with the delivery."

"Excuse me?"

"Twenty, with delivery."

"That's it? What are you making?" I mean, I don't know much about flowers, but I know that for $20 - WITH delivery - I'm probably getting a bunch of baby's breath and white carnations. If I'm lucky. I could be sending a bunch of dandelions.

"You said simple," Rita said.

"Umm... so what does that mean to you?"

"I was thinking of sending a small bouquet of carnations," she said, confirming my fears. "You know, about twelve? Those bouquets cost about $7. But you need a minimum for delivery or else we charge, so..."

"Alright," I said, cutting her off. I had places to be. Rita was starting to really annoy me already. I liked flowers. I wanted to keep it that way. "I want to send a $60 bouquet. For $60, what white and pink flowers can you put together?"

She listed a bunch of flowers.

"Those sound great. I'd like those in the arrangement, so I'll take whatever you can do for the $60."

She typed in a bunch of notes and took my credit card and went through with the transaction. She repeated when it would be delivered - Monday - and what I wanted. It all sounded great.

"Okay, well, thank you," I said to her as I headed out.

"You're welcome, honey," she said. "And I'm sorry to hear about your dad."

A Raisin in the Sun

Recently, I've been having these awful moments of realization when I figure out that there's a whole bunch of things that I am never going to be able to do in my lifetime. Essentially, my dreams have been dying at a pretty rapid and alarming pace lately.

For example, Oprah has really been messing with me lately. I've always wanted to go to her show. Well, her show is ending this season, and I don't have tickets, so there's a dream... pretty much gone. I mean sure, there's the outside shot that I could get to a show at some point this year, so technically that dream isn't dead yet. It's just dying. That gave me some comfort, but then I watched her Favorite Things Show in November, and I realized that a more specific and bigger dream - to be at that show - was definitively dead. I told my sister this one morning on our way to work.

"It's my dream to go to that Favorite Things Show, and now, I know it will never happen," I said to her sadly.

"But how do you know for sure?" she asked me, just like everyone asks when someone says that something will never happen. Nobody likes when hope dies.

"Because her final Favorite Things Show aired yesterday."

"Oh."

Yeah, so that died. Thanks, Oprah.

Then, I was watching one of Oprah's new shows on her network and it is about the Oprah Winfrey Show Behind the Scenes. Secretly, or not-so-secretly, I've always sort of wanted to work for Oprah. There are many valid reasons for this, but that's besides the point. So I guess I could technically work for Oprah still, even after her show ends, but the thing that I could never figure out was what I wanted to do FOR Oprah. Like when people asked me, okay, so you want to work for Oprah, but what would you do for her? I couldn't answer that question. Until I watched this Behind the Scenes show. See, when I trying to figure out what to do with my career a couple years back, a lot of people suggested that I be a project manager. People thought that I would be good at managing projects. I couldn't really understand what that looked like, but then I saw this Oprah Behind the Scenes show and I realized... I should be a TV producer. Specifically, I would have loved to be one of Oprah's producers. Basically, producers take the idea for the show and then they manage the production of it. They make sure the guests are ready and prepared, that they have all the details nailed down for the segments, etc. It is essentially managing a project, and in this case, they're managing a project that I am definitely interested in... the Oprah show! So I found my dream career. I would like to be a TV producer for Oprah.

Well, coulda woulda shoulda, because as everyone knows by now, Oprah's show is ending and she doesn't need a producer. And I guess you could say that I could always just be a producer for another show, but no. My point is that yet another dream, to be a producer for the Oprah show, is dead.

This one was a little tougher to swallow, because it was more symbolic for me. See, I've always wondered what I am actually going to do with my life. Yeah, I teach and all, but I always thought that if I wanted to do something else, I could. And then I had trouble thinking of what that something else would be, so I stuck with teaching because it was familiar and comfortable and easy. I don't mean all of those things like it's a piece of cake job - it's not - but I mean because it's a lot harder to just stop your life and start over. As it turns out, I don't even think I COULD do that anymore.

I keep trying to think of an analogy for this, like if you went on this huge road trip or something and all of a sudden wanted to go somewhere entirely different, but I keep realizing that you could always turn back in every example that I think of. Every example, no matter what, you can turn back or make a change and start over. Except in reality, with time. Because you can't really start over there. You really can't.

So this dreams thing goes beyond Oprah for me. Oprah is sort of the embodiment of it right now, because it's the most tangible way to explain what I mean, but I would be willing to bet that everyone has an experience like mine with Oprah. Because at a certain point - sorry to be the dream killer - the long list you had as a kid of what you could be or do will turn into a longer list that you have as an adult of what you'll never be and do.

So I'm never going to be in Oprah's Favorite Things audience. I'm not going to be a TV producer for her show. I recently had a moment where I realized I'm not going to ever be Miss America (I'm beyond the age cut off, in case you were wondering how I knew that for absolute certainty). There's a bunch of serious ones I could put here, but you get the idea.

And before everyone freaks out that I'm being overly dramatic or depressing, I can tell you that there's still a lot of things I can do... some with great difficulty, but I suppose it's not impossible. It's just that recently, it feels a little like I'm in this minefield where I have to be careful of my next step because boom! another one of my dreams might just explode and die right in my face. It's very jarring when it happens, because it reminds you of the universal truth that my father once wisely shared with me. He won't remember this, and I include it for two reasons: one, because when he inevitably freaks out that I'm in some tailspin after he reads this blog I can point to what he said as evidence that he's thought the same thing, and two, because I finally understood what he meant.

We were driving somewhere, I forget where. Maybe to a bookstore. I don't remember what we were talking about or when it was, but I remember exactly what he said and how he said it. "I had this deep thought once," he said. (Yes, he said this.) "And it was like my one deep thought." (Yes, he said this.) "It made a lot of sense to me, because it's really deep." (Yes, he said this.)

"What?" I asked him.

"It's later than you think."

I probably said nothing in response.

"Very deep," he said again.

It took me a few years, but he's right. It is.