Planters

Family is like a supermarket bouquet. You’re happy to have it, but you suspect there are better ones out there.

Daisies beside tired roses, or neon dyed carnations. An occasional leaf, fern frond or St. Patrick’s Day mini balloon. A jumble of what’s available, doing the best it can. Hoping to have impact and be remembered.

I once taught in Yaoundé, which is in Western Africa. I was doing something I never thought I’d do, in a place I never expected to be. I had very little context for my life at that time. So, I often found myself thinking of my grandmother’s African Violets. The best in all of Montello, WI I’m told.

She grew the flowers. I made the journey.

Her green thumb planted the seeds that took me to Africa.

My mom preferred reliable flowers like peonies and lilacs; but she wasn’t above stealing a hothouse flower or two under the right circumstances. She was the kind of gal who takes home wedding centerpieces.

When you opened a book in her home, a pressed flower would often fall out.  Dead. Like the people from whose funerals the flowers were taken. Sentimental, sweet and just a little bit morbid. Our most loved shelved in her home library with a floral keepsake and laminated obituary.

A variation on the family tradition continues in my own home. Little stashes of dried flowers next to artwork. From proms. Weddings. A rose from the first bouquet from my husband. Mementos from life instead of death.

In my mother’s King James bible, you would find a flower, a 1945 wedding license and the obituary of her first husband. He loved trees. His maple grove still borders our yard 71 years after his passing.

Warren Radke was the father of my brother Arthur. Art the 7-year-old Protestant mensch. A boy who turned worry into action. A kid who wanted to provide.

A family story lingers.

A few months after being widowed, our mom spies something odd in her front yard.

She and our grandma hunch down to look more closely at the rogue plant starting to peek through the soil. Grandma, having grown up on a farm, easily names it. “Corn Dorothy. That’s corn.”

Art appears carrying a battered, well-used water can. A big smile on his face.

“I saved up to buy seeds. I didn’t say anything in case they didn’t take, but they did! You don’t have to worry, Mom. If you can’t afford groceries, we’ll have corn.”

Warren, a yard fanatic, might not have indulged Art. Mom is different, and no longer answers to a man. Together they go to the library to learn about gardening and tend their front yard farm.  It is the crop of a boy who understands that despite weeds and chaos, there is always the chance for something delightful to take root. In the autumn, they have corn. 

Like all sweet things it is gone far too quickly.

My brother Art joined his father nearly 40 years ago on February 24th, 1986.

In winter, when farms and gardens are fallow.

When things die rather than grow.

Another memory.

My mom and I sit quietly in the church after Art’s funeral before the inevitable midwestern luncheon. His pallbearers guide the casket up the aisle. We rise, to follow. Mom plucks two blush pink roses from an arrangement and hands one to me.

“Press this in a book when you get home.”

The hearse begins to pull away, crushing the snow in its path. Slush splashes up and lands into a nearby puddle where it mixes with dirty water. The puddle trickles toward a culvert where it will be carried away to somewhere new and unseen.

African violets, peonies, maple trees, corn, pressed flowers: For one singular second, which I'll remember as longs as I am able to remember, everything feels inevitable, connected and infinite. Ashes to ashes, Art to dust. Leading the way to a time when even the agnostic hopes we’ll all be reunited one way or another.

        A comforting gust of wind swirls around the family that should be one larger. A broken dozen – 11 flowers in a supermarket bouquet wondering what the hell happened to the 12th.

           It’s still here. It just can’t be seen.

It’s waiting on a shelf between the pages of a dusty book.