There are five places for flowers in my apartment: the vase on my coffee table, the bottle in my kitchen, a spot on my dresser and another spot on my roommate’s windowsill.
The language of flowers — giving, receiving and placing — has slowly been developed since living with my roommate.
We love tulips in the spring, large white lilies in the fall and sometimes the colorful and mismatched arrangements from a Sunday trip to H Mart. Roses are the best for drying and stay the best long-term.
My grandmother taught me how to dry flowers when I was younger.
To dry them, one must tie them together and allow the moisture to evaporate while upside down — this prevents the weight of the flower from tilting over.
This process can take a few weeks, so patience and a cool place are essential. After drying, the flowers maintain a deep, rich color and can either stay hung on the wall — I have quite a few — or be placed back in a vase, standing up straight for the rest of time.
I always keep at least one flower from a bouquet given to me. However, some may think I hold onto the moment a little too long.
I was once told that dead flowers were morbid and sad. They did not understand why I could possibly want to keep dead flowers.
They weren’t dead, I argued, they were just echoes.
Call it nostalgia — or an irrational and impossibly deep sentimentality — but I have a deep attachment to anything given to me.
Bracelets made from rubber bands and beads from my little cousins? Safe and in a jewelry box. Every card anyone has ever written to me? Scattered among various drawers both in New York and in Boston — envelopes included.
Flowers are circular and fluid.
For my mother’s birthday, June 10, a sparkly bouquet of purple and pink flowers to celebrate. For my little cousin’s communion, a multicolored arrangement of daisies. For my graduation, roses from my grandfather.
They don’t last forever, and yet, there is a desire to give and receive in repetition. They give the life of beauty even for a transient period, investing in the moment rather than tangibility.
For my birthday, I came home to white and crimson flowers from my roommate.
She explained to me that they reminded her of the movie, “Twilight,” and therefore, she bought them for me. Between the two of us, we have about twenty copies of different versions of the Twilight books.
That comment, for me, was an intense reflection of our relationship, history and interests.
After a few weeks of seeing each other, going to museums and doing all those sweet dates two STEM majors can make time for, my boyfriend had wanted to take me to dinner.
I was so nervous, forcing my roommate to sit in my room while I got ready in the sort of ritualistic manner that emerges when one of two female friends is going out.
She played music and gossiped with me, watching as I tried on a few different outfits. I received some brutally honest vetoes to some very interesting outfits I had curated and finally decided on a grey, business-like dress.
My boyfriend arrived at the door with a large clear wrapper in hand. He stood crestfallen but still maintaining an air of lightness — like he always does.
Somewhere on the 20-some-odd minute commute to my apartment, the flowers he had gotten me fell out of the wrapper, and he wasn’t sure when or where.
To this day, I cannot think of anything as sweet.
Maybe this embodies why it feels so good to receive flowers, right?
I was so endeared by his efforts and similarly amused by the sorrow he felt the situation warranted. I told him it was the first time a boy had ever brought me flowers. Flowers denote speciality. Flowers represent occasion and celebration — graduation, birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day. They’re everywhere.
The stranger you see on the street or on the train headed to someone with a bouquet or vase or flowers, or the plant on the desk with a little card attached.
Sometimes the occasion for giving flowers is just because — just because you love someone, just because you were thinking of them or just because you’re there.
A particularly stressful week for my boyfriend — a week leading up to an organic chemistry test — prompted my purchase of some yellow daisies that reminded me of him.
Since the night of the lost and scattered flowers, my boyfriend has brought me flowers of yellows, reds and pinks. He gravitates toward the bright and vibrant colors of carnations, and so I have gotten really skilled at drying them out.
