The Flower

I was eight and it was the Fair and even then I didn’t like the feeling of all those people just walking around with nothing real to do. Even then I felt weirdly out of place because I didn’t like screaming children or farm animals and it wasn’t until later did I master how to eat an ice cream cone. At eight I always ate too slowly and it would melt and then fall down the front of my shirt and onto the ground and my mom would look at me and say “not again,” in a way that was more a frightened, will she ever learn?

I would look at her and squint my eyes and in my head I would say yes, I will, I will go on to do great things.

And then my older sister was screaming about getting a flower, a giant, as-tall-as-I-was flower made out of tissue paper, folded neatly into one massive petal. And so she pleaded and begged and my dad said no but then she pleaded and begged some more and he gave in, probably because she liked screaming children and farm animals and didn’t spill her ice cream on her shirt.

“Purple!” she shouted. My dad asked me which color I wanted and I said I didn’t want a flower. I simply pointed to the balloon tied to the flower stand and asked if I could have that instead. Putting away his wallet he asked the man behind the flower cart if I could have it, and without any problem and perhaps a little confusion, he awarded me the plain simple white balloon. I held it tightly in my hand and it hovered just above my head, and it made me happy.

Of course walking back to the car, my sister and I started fighting about something kids fight about, and in an instant the little string slipped through my little hand, and as I tried frantically to grip it all I got were handfuls of air. I can still remember the feeling, how my heart momentarily stopped, how I knew as it was happening that there was nothing I could do to stop it. I can still see it, floating up into the air as my neck craned back and I followed it with my eyes as it got smaller and smaller in the distance. I watched until it disappeared from view and the disappointment it left behind was acute.

It’s always in the moments when it’s too late, that you realize you’ve made a mistake. When you’re watching something slip away, only then comes the clarity you feel you’ve been searching for. I of course made the wrong choice. I should have picked something that I knew would last. But then again, it’s the balloon that had I wanted, and in life I guess, there are people who go for what they want no matter the consequences.

I think about that and the choices I make every time I go home and still see, all these years later, that big purple flower still sitting in the corner of my sisters room.