|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
February 15, 2014
Published as Family History in a
Gramma Letter dated March 5, 1996
and in a WIP dated March 19, 2002.
© 1996, 2002, 2015 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
|
| | |
Rose in a Bowl (2005)
© 2005 by Bud Grossmann
|
FLOWERS AND FOREBODINGS
March 5, 1996
Dear Gramma,
This past holiday season I gave my wife a rosebush. When she found it under our Christmas tree, it was little more than a gift-wrapped bag of roots and soil. Above the ribbon, a stubby, thorny stump stuck out. It had a few healthy, leafy stalks and a metal tag bearing a nursery’s logo with the registered designation, “Fragrant Memory.”
In our yard here in Honolulu I put the plant into a properly prepared hole, watered it almost faithfully, and spoon-fed it some meals of rose food. It grew. Although I never met them face-to-face, I poisoned the beetles that evidently devoured the leaves by night. On the morning of Valentine’s Day, two fully formed, fragrant buds were ready to create memories. The rose had made good on the promise of its name.
Last week I brought into our house another bud from the same bush. Unlike its older sisters, this bloom was shy. Its “rose-y” fragrance was less bold. Within a day, its outer petals opened, but the inner ones remained closed, hugging themselves to form a soft-skinned knot atop the leafy, tiny-thorned stem.
When I lifted our crystal bud vase to inhale the reluctant blossom’s scent, I thought of the playwright’s assertion: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. That might be true of roses, I suppose, but there can indeed be mighty power in a name.
Take for instance the place you live in. Its purpose and character may have changed somewhat over the years, but the sign at the front of the driveway has been replaced more times than I consider necessary. When I last looked, it read “Columbia Health Care Center,” which sounds to me more like a place to get a flu shot than somewhere that people reside. On the envelopes I send you, I insist on spelling out the antiquated appellation: “Columbia County Manor.” That name brings to me images more homey than medicinal. With a manor I associate the aromas of roses or baked bread; with a health care center I think of disinfectant.
Something else has received a new name. When I read the latest issue of The Columbian, the Manor’s quarterly newsletter, I saw an announcement for the annual event that honors residents who are age 90 and above. For nine years the celebration was called the “Gay 90's Party.” I always thought that was a pretty cute name for it because many of the folks being honored had indeed been born during the 1890's, the decade nicknamed the Gay 90's.
This year, The Columbian tells us, the same event was called the “90's Club Party.” The newsletter offered no explanation for the change, so some readers (like me) will wonder why “Gay 90's” had to be improved upon. Maybe you folks in the new “90's Club” are just too glum to be called gay.
Or maybe—and I’m just guessing here—someone felt that the word gay has become so associated in recent times with people romantically attracted to others of their same sex, that the word can no longer comfortably include non-gay nonagenarians. Hmm. As someone who has numerous fine friends and a few favorite relatives who happen to be gay persons, I myself am not uncomfortable with the word. I don’t think I would have changed the name of the party.
The shy rose I mentioned never did open. Maybe it was holding tight to some secret and just couldn’t share its glory with the world. After a time, the outer petals fell to the tabletop, and the inner knot shriveled and dried.
I hope some cheerful roses brought color and sweetness to your 90's Club Party, Gramma. And I hope you and all your friends had a gay old time.
Love,
Buddy
|
I would welcome your thoughts on this page (or any of my
others). Write to me at the following address. Please
be sure to spell Grossmann with two n’s and
mention what page you are writing about.
Thanks! BUD GROSSMANN
|
Top of this page
|
|
This page was updated Sat, Feb 14, 2015, 4:12PM CST
|
© 2015 by Bud Grossmann
|
|
|
|
 |
