If I wasn’t a college student and didn’t have dreams of being a world-famous artist, mainly for pointillism, I would open a flower shop.
The reason why is because I like to go to the grocery store, pick out flowers and make bouquets for my room — and they come out pretty well, if I do say so myself. But, then again, I think I could open a bakery because I bake delicious cookies. I also think I could open a stationery store because I wrote a letter once.
The other day I had the pleasure of going to a real flower shop for a “Get Well Soon” bouquet. Not the grocery store, and not the dream shop in my head — the real deal.
Walking into the flower shop was like walking through a tunnel in a dystopian novel. Not because there was anything haunting about it, but because it was dark, cavernous, humid and at the end of a long hallway was a little room with a check-out desk and skylight.
I figure that the only difference between a dystopian tunnel and the flower shop would be all of the beautiful flowers and plants lining the walls. I felt like a bride floating down the aisle, or a little ant in the forest.
Do ants care much about flowers? Okay, how about I felt like a bee in a meadow full of flowers? Whatever, this metaphor is escaping me. I loved it there. Point blank.
The little room under the skylight is where things got fun because that is where Paul was.
Paul is an old man who wears barrel jeans and too-big-for-his-face glasses — my favorite kind — and seems to always have a pair of scissors in his hand — but not in a niche serial killer way, in a florist way.
Luckily, when I got to the shop, no one else was there. I had Paul’s full attention. Of course, I don’t think it would have mattered if there was one or 100 people in the shop, Paul has enough energy to go around. He was practically bouncing off the walls excited, waving the flowers in his hand around so furiously that the leaves fell off — that’s a good trick.
I told him I needed a “Get Well Soon” bouquet. He looked at me with a knowing look, an apology in his eyes, but not on his lips, and then said, “do you like roses?” I said, “sometimes, but not right now.”
Then we got to work — Paul and I, me and Paul. He proceeded to explain what he liked about each flower. He said he likes calla lilies for “Get Well Soon” bouquets and thinks that kale is so pretty, and wishes it was introduced as a centerpiece. When we’d gotten to be more friendly, he admitted he didn’t like sunflowers much. Luckily for Paul, neither do I. After all, sunflower people can be very adamant. That’s what Paul said, anyways.
For this particular bouquet, we went with the calla lilies. I said I wanted some more green and a bit more white, so we found the missing pieces. This is the moment where it all came crumbling down around me: I will never own a flower shop. It’s never going to happen. Well, it could happen, if I had some more money — which I don’t — and a shoddy sense of investment — which I do. But it won’t because I’ll never be Paul.
Paul knew these plants inside and out. I described a vague color and texture profile and he ran to the back to get a flower I can’t even remember the name of. The memorization of this man — sheesh! But it’s also the extreme care and passion that he shows. He reminds me of my brother, Harry, who studies agriculture and knows a blade of grass from a blade of grass, for Christ’s sake. Seems like Harry got all the all-knowing-nature genes, and even with all my flower shop dreams, I just wouldn’t be able to hack it.
I had a pit in my stomach when parting with Paul and the beautiful, damp flower shop. You’d never need a humidifier if you lived around there.
Just as much as I loved my time there and just as much as I liked picking out the bouquet that wasn’t my typical Trader Joe’s Special, I knew my flower shop dream had ended.
While I walked out of the store down that long, dark hallway, I sniffed in the aroma of calla lilies to keep me from crying. I felt like an alien space princess being banished to her death. Hm… maybe the whole thing wasn’t as far off from the dystopian tunnel as I once thought. Let’s see here…
Get initiated into a new world.
Meet a mentor.
Learn technique.
Spend a bunch of money? (I don’t know, I haven’t read a dystopian book since middle school).
Accept defeat.
Sounds pretty dystopian to me, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. You can’t be good at everything. That’s why we need the Pauls, and the Harrys, and the bakers and the stationery people, and you — because of whatever you do.
As for the Lilis? Well … I guess it’s onto boutiques.
