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A Mother's Day Story
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As I returned to my car after our appointment, Wendi shouted a final instruction from her front porch, “And get her some flowers for Mother’s Day. Purple Iris.” Although my mother had died a dozen years ago, I took the comment in stride. After all, Wendi was a psychic and Mother loved purple.
Memories accompanied my drive home. Mother dressed in lilac, violet, and amethyst, but only when she wasn’t wearing crimson, scarlet, or ruby. She despaired that I always wore brown.
That was the color of life before Mother. If my pre-teen childhood – with Mom number one – were a movie, it would be a travelogue of Communist Moscow. Bleak, joyless, and brown. Too young for Vodka, I sat in the corner and read.
But when I was 12 and she was 21, Mother number two married my 40 year-old divorced dad and turned my life to Technicolor. As part of her plan to draw me out of myself, she bought me a hot pink dress for my 16th birthday. I thought it looked like a pleated lampshade with spaghetti straps. Withdrawn and inhibited, I couldn’t see its elegance…or my own. But Mother did. As if I were a neglected hothouse orchid, she encouraged me to bloom. Over the years, she forced my young soul - acclimated to the shadows – out into the sun.
Thoughts of the past faded as I drove into my busy day. Bittersweet nostalgia turned to eager anticipation. At fifty-something, wearing red and on my own, I was about to buy my very first home.
"I bloomed late," I whispered to Mother, "but thanks to you, I bloomed."
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The realtor turned her Volvo into the driveway of a red brick house. White shutters framed the front bay window of the suburban split-level.
We walked to the stoop, she opened the door, I peeked in. Then I burst out laughing. The kitchen glowed at me from the end of the entry hallway, ablaze in color. The walls and ceiling could only be compared to the inside of a barrel of ripe Florida oranges. A morning cup of coffee would be superfluous in this kitchen.
Throughout the house, we encountered design inspired by Crayola’s eight pack. Banana in the family room. Powder blue in the nursery, with white puffs – either dumplings or clouds – sprinkled across the ceiling. A second bedroom horizontally divided in half, the ceiling and top half raspberry, with blueberry on the bottom half and inside the closet. I laughed my way through our tour, as each unexpected color appeared.
In the back yard, we confronted a toddler freeway. The patio, devoid of any signs of adult life, was strewn with miniature plastic vehicles. An orange three-wheeler had crashed head-on into the retaining wall that surrounded the terrace. A red wagon sat behind it. On top of the wagon lay a pink bike with streamers on the handlebars. It looked as though drunken munchkins had abandoned the scene of a three-car pile-up.
This house tickled my funny bone but the realtor didn’t share my amusement. She took note of the important things – location, price, construction. All met with her approval, but in the end I made the right decision for the wrong reason. I wanted to buy it because it made me laugh.
Negotiations followed, a deal concluded, and the family moved out. On a cool spring evening before I took possession, I showed the now-vacated house to a friend.
In the family’s absence the yard had turned to knee-high weeds. Second thoughts overwhelmed my previous optimism. It would take a fortune in paint to transform the gaudy rooms to a less Caribbean decor. The yard alone would require years of labor. Despondent at my lack of judgment, I looked around me to determine the scope of the disaster. For the first time I noticed a flowerbed bordering the yard on three sides. Depression gave way to astonishment. Three hundred purple Iris swayed gently in the breeze. My friend and I stared at each other open-mouthed. Simultaneously, we realized it was Mother’s Day.
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