a wedding staple
My friend Tina. She sends me flowers whenever I piss her off. Two rose stems to be precise. Two! Of different colours. She likes white and yellow. A white rose and a yellow rose. It drives me nuts. I detest flowers, especially when given to me in public. I don’t know why. I hate picked flowers. I have no problems with growing blossoming flowers. My problem with flowers starts when they have been cut.
Tina sends me roses to get back to me. To piss me off too. It does piss me off but I am kind of used to that now. A sight of two roses on my desk? Tina! But I get to smile. As expected, they find their way to the dustbin seconds after I sight them. Then they are forgotten.
Today, I am mad. No, I am double mad. I cannot believe what I am looking at. I am standing at the door to my office holding a dripping umbrella. My new shoes are wet. They have already lost their luster. I can’t show them off now. The rain just soiled my morning for me. And then, to make matters worse, a huge bouquet of roses is lying on my desk. Which genius decided to leave roses on my desk? Is someone testing, or playing with, me? A whole humongous bouquet on my desk? On a mid-September Monday morning! Somebody please salvage this day for me. Me and bouquets, we don’t have a pleasant past. The last time someone had intentionally brought a bouquet near me, I made him, (yes, it had to be a him), I made him swear never to buy flowers again. It was Valentines Day, two rears ago. My husband just wasted an abnormal amount of money on a bunch of petals. Was he mad? As if he did not know that we were in the middle of the worst ever financial crisis we have ever experienced together. Our own recession. He saw it fit to buy me roses, to uplift my spirits. My reaction saw him self impose on himself on exile to the couch for two nights. Till I reminded him that our bed was a six by six.
Now, exactly two and half yeart5s later, on a mid-September wet Monday morning, someone dumps a bouquet of roses on my desk. I am incensed. I do not even enter my office. My first thought is to call Tina and tell her she has gone overboard. But I am too mad to even dial. I walk off in search of the cleaners. I want the damn thing off my desk, into a dust bin. I am going to supervise that myself.
I find Dennis cleaning the stairs that to third floor. “Dennis, those flowers on my desk, I want them in the dust bin instead.” He unsuccessfully suppresses a smile. He knows my long life antagonism with flowers. I follow him closely behind.
“What’s that?” I ask him as he holds a card that was lying next to the bouquet before lifting the flowers. He does not talk; he simply extends his hand and gives me the card. My hand involuntarily takes it
“I couldn’t help it, but they exactly look like you.”
I lose it. I go berserk. Someone just equated me to a bunch of flowers.
“Leave them!” I shout. Dennis looks at me, willing his eyes to ask me the question his mouth cannot find the words to ask.
“I said leave them.” I repeat. He puts them back on the desk and walks out.
I am livid. I am mad. I am murderous. I ask who brought hem.
“Delivery guy, he insisted on putting them on your desk. Said he was directed to md0om so. No! Paid to do so.”
Everybody avoids me. They know what flowers do to me. I text Tina. LOL, comes the response.
I lock out the whole thing. This is too much. The sorry bouquet and its faithful companion find themselves in one of the corners in my office. All lady visitors to my give it a longing look. Those who know my relationship with flowers give a quizzical look. Others give complements to which I nod and mumble incomprehensible.
My efforts at unraveling the source fail miserably. By evening, my anger has subsided. I occasionally smile wryly after looking at the bouquet. I can afford to marvel at the bravery of whoever sent the flowers. Lucky the delivery guy didn’t find me in the office. My reaction could have Nderitu Njoka’s arguments super appealing to him.
I unwittingly leave them in the office when I leave for home. I promptly forget about them. Tom my husband is already home reading a book whose title is something close to “Roasted maize and Molehills”. I say hi and go into the shower.
When I check my phone later, there’s a message.
“I hope you liked them. If you didn’t, I am sorry. It’s only that I pass by this florist every morning and display reminds me of your face”.
It’s Tom. I look at him, peacefully reading his maize roasting book. I jump at him. We fall down laughing like kids.
Native Essays 