Word of the Week - 13

Pre-Raphaelite painting, The Soul of the Rose, by John William Waterhouse.

Word of the Week:  ROSES

For a time, until the aphids became more than anyone could bear, the porch of my childhood home was flanked by trellises through which pink climbing roses twined.   We were not a gardening people.  Everything was kept tidy by professionals who trimmed the hedges and mowed.  I was elected for raking, sweeping and weeding.  I once grew radishes and, as I remember, a few carrots for a class project.  Never again a rose of any size or description.

In the last two years, perhaps less, rose images began courting me.  And I such an easy mark.  Beauty nourishes me and there is something about the rose, followed by flowers in general, that produces tranquility as I fall asleep, a lightness of heart when I'm awake.  There is a sense akin to having made a new friend, one in whom affection and steadfastness are never doubted, whose ability to cheer does not falter.

I have reached and passed the age my sister once referred to as "powder-faced lady" from her long career in fashion and retail among the dowagers of Pasadena.  As I picture them there is a hint of rose scent in their powder.  I imagine a cut glass globe vase of the old varieties, petals loose and dreamy, not tightly furled like florist bouquets.  A few petals have fallen, attractively, to the surface of a round, marble-topped table in the foyer, standing between twin staircases that curve to a second-floor balcony.  Old world blossoms encouraged by loving hands.

So it is that I prowl Google's image library, entering the most accurate descriptions I can invent for what I hope to find, like rose-patterned socks.

It is encouraging, affirming, to fall so innocently in love with the enduring rose at an advanced age.  No doubt I am not really so newly-smitten, that this hankering, this allegiance has lurked for some time, finally stepping into the light and declaring itself as the mad crush it is.