The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Now, as an adult, my hopes for the future were simple: I wanted to be alone, and to be surrounded by flowers. It seemed, finally, that I might get exactly what I wanted.

“There’s rosemary; that’s for remembrance. I’m quoting Shakespeare; you’ll read him in high school. And there’s columbine, desertion; holly, foresight; lavender, mistrust.

“I believe you can prove everyone wrong, too, Victoria. Your behavior is a choice; it isn’t who you are.”

If I started lying about it, there would be nothing left in my life that was beautiful or true.

The cycle would continue. Promises and failures, mothers and daughters, indefinitely.

You handed me those flowers like an apology, even though you hadn’t done anything wrong, even though your bouquet was as close to perfection as I’d ever seen. I knew right then that you felt unworthy, that you believed yourself to be unforgivably flawed.”

“Do you really think you’re the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed? Who’s been hurt almost to the point of breaking?”

If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.

Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.