Fresh Flowers for the Roses

“Honestly, the forest doesn’t care. It’s a forest. It doesn’t care about our opinions. It doesn’t care about our worries. It needs nothing that you and I could offer. The forest is just there living. It welcomes you to look and to learn. Learn about the way morning light pierces through foliage like a sun spear. Understand how the rivers flow with torrential anger foaming at the mouth. If you drown in there, the river won’t have your death on its conscience. It’s a river and it will river on. The forest lets you enter its grounds and permeates your lungs with a deep woodland breath, your shoulders unencumbered by any kind of weight. The forest doesn’t care about you Andrew, but you should care about the forest.”

A tear falls on the page.

I first read your grandpa’s handwriting after he passed away. I’m not kidding. Hadn’t read a word from him till then. “The Forest” was the first entry in his notebook. Dad had been sparsely writing for about twenty years before I ever read any of it. The way the letters effortlessly glided across the page struck me given my father’s hands or at least the memory I have of them. Calluses and rugged bumps of all sorts spread across his palms. My father had “I’ve worked hard” hands. Rugged, but warm in their embrace those hands. I’d come home from a snow day, winter’s sheen covering my little rosy face, and he would shake the white coat off my hair and gently grab my cheeks in his hands. His whole presence was free of pretense and fluff and just so unapologetic. “That’s why I fell for him,” said mom as we looked down at his grave.

Every Sunday, we’d make the walk down Notre-Dame street, cross the gates of the cemetery, wave at the groundskeeper and thank him for guarding the resting folk with a whole batch of chocolate chip cookies still slightly warm from mom’s oven. In truth, a sort of bribe for him to take special care of my dad’s patch of grass. He would even change the flowers halfway through the week with new ones from the shop across the street. Good location for a flower shop. Sort of morbidly intentional like a funeral home next to a hospital (if that’s a thing). All I know is we would show up and fresh flowers would already be there. We’d reach dad’s row and, almost like boarding a plane, we’d tentatively make our way to the middle seat of ROW 15 and greet the passenger in SEAT 10.

“Hope you are enjoying the journey. I’ll be there soon so you better save me a seat.”

“Don’t say that mom.”

“I’ve done my share of living Andrew. I’ve done my share. I can’t let him travel alone. He never even stepped outside the state. I gotta go soon. I love you, but I gotta go soon.”

Two tears fall on the page.

And she did. She left me the recipe for the cookies so I got the groundskeeper to take care of them. I believe there’s a new guy now, such is life, but I wrote down the recipe for the cookies below. No one can resist them so make a batch every Sunday and bring them over. I want my flowers to stay fresh.

My father’s notebook was black with dust traced fingerprints, paint stains, markers used to redact entire passages of his letters as if saying “I couldn’t find the right way to say this so it shouldn’t be said at all”. “ I have no problem with that,” I thought to myself. There were numerous blank spaces in between heavy paragraphs detailing a lifetime of memories. Like he needed to let the page breathe before he was ready to write again. That thing is a treasure trove of “How it feels to be a grandpa” and “The day I knew your mother loved me” or that devastating entry “I have cancer and I don’t know how to tell you and your mom”.

Four tears fall on the page.

You’ll see when you find it. He mostly wrote about mom, about me, about you … well … you when you were a kid. He loved you dearly. I know you know, but I just want to make sure. I want you to have it in words inked upon a page. I want you to feel the weight of my words, of my father’s words, in your hands as I felt his hands warm my cold cheeks. This is yours to read whenever you feel like you are losing your grasp on me. That’s what I did with my father’s notebook. I read it over and over like the most personal tale ever told. It’s a time machine that small notebook. I’ll pass you the keys to the machine in a little bit. I still have some things to say about my dad.

You’ve seen his work all over the house. A large part of that man was his craft. My father worked the forests. He would pay respect to them and care for every fallen tree with great honor. I could hear him in his workshop turning oak still fragrant with the scent of the earth into chairs and tables varnished to an amber glow. His walls filled to the brim with tones of cherry, walnut, cinnamon and rosewood. His work was well known in town, but that never was the point. He wrote it down himself.

“I must say. It was my calling to do this. It really was. If I hadn’t found the forest, it would have found me one way or another. Maybe I would have been some sort of thick bearded hermit. I don’t believe that living off nature is as romantic as it may seem in my mind, but it would have been inevitable. Like some great tragic gravitational pull as if the forest did care about me. So, if someone likes the work, great. If someone doesn’t like it, great as long as I did the piece justice. I hope you decide to keep things going, but above all, do whatever you want to do.”

So, I did what I wanted and kept the workshop going. “Rose & Son” was born after my father passed. The “& Son” meant so much to me. I learned and worked and splintered and bled and made things that were often not great but good enough. I’ll be honest; I never quite had his touch. I never had his eyes. I never had his hands, but I tried and I loved trying.

Too many tears to count fall on the page.

Dad’s cancer bulldozed into his life. First, wrecking his lower back then doing its demolition work on his hips then steamrolling downward until the foundation crumbled. In the aftermath, mom and I were left digging through the rubbles for anything to salvage. We couldn’t let go of any of his shirts, knickknacks, trinkets, pieces still in progress frozen in time eagerly waiting for him to pick things up. You can see the attrition in the notebook. More redactions. The smooth handwriting now riddled with trembling kinks and swerves. I just vividly remember kissing his barren wrinkled head which years ago was brimming with a chestnut mane almost lion like in its volume. Couple grey streaks. He would tighten up the wild bunch into a ponytail, put on his glasses, grab his apron, enter his workshop and disappear into his work.

The notebook is closed momentarily … then opened again.

First thing to go was the image of his back. I started forgetting the shape of it. I held on to every photo album I could find. Scanning them and saving the images in a folder in my mind titled "DO NOT DELETE". The thing is, memory, much like the forest, doesn't care. Time is a virus and will find its way in. If time doesn't, your mind will do the damage. I started thinking "maybe his voice wasn't that deep" or "his smile wasn’t that way at all". I really lost it when time came for mom to board her flight. No one close enough to confirm or deny my doubts. Hoarding memories actually makes it harder to remember. They become self-aware little demons and constantly try to slip away from your grasp to fade away or morph into pale alterations, damaged copies of the originals. It's impossible to wipe away the white noise from those tapes in my head. Writing helps. Maybe that's why dad started writing. I know that's why I started writing.

I’m grateful that my father’s words were passed down to me. I’d like to do the same and I want you to write to your kids. I owe a lot of untold stories. That’s why I’m writing, for our stories to reach every branch of our family tree like water coursing its way through a forest feeding sapling and giving some life to old trees on the brink of truly dying.

“Do you know what ‘truly dying’ means Andrew?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Being forgotten. Truly dying means being forgotten. Don’t let your mother die. Don’t let your grandparents die and lastly, if you still have some space up there, don’t let your dad die.”

I have fulfilled my promise … well mostly. The next passage is the last paragraph from my father’s notebook. You’ll see later on that the handwriting changed. My mother took over writing duties. He didn’t have the strength anymore.

“If I have one regret, its never having gone on an adventure with you. A real one. Not just camping or a road trip. I mean something big. World big. I’ll admit it; I was guilty of loving my work too much. Blessed, but still guilty. I should have taken the time to really show you something outside of this small world I found comfort in. I never did. I’m sorry. So, here’s what I’ll do and I’m telling you right now I won’t take no for an answer. As matter a fact, I physically can’t accept your answer so it’s my call to make anyway. Reach into the notebook’s back pocket and you’ll find a check for $10,000. Yes. $10,000. Your mother already knows and she promised not to accept any of it if you were to offer it to her because I know you. Now, I am trusting you to use every penny of that to go on an adventure with your kids someday. A real adventure. The one I couldn’t take you on. There. Now everything is said and done. Love you and take care of your mother. I know she can take care of herself, but still.”

I realized that I’d never shared that with you. Now here’s the thing. We never went on that adventure. There was really no time after dad passed for me to leave the business for a week let alone a month. Add to that having to take care of … I’m sorry that I couldn’t take you on a big adventure, but I want to make up for it or at least try. That $10,000 from grandpa, it’s yours. Add to that $10,000 from me and that makes $20,000 specifically to go on an adventure with your kids. Take a break like I should have. Really this time. That’s that. Now for the time machine, I just can’t give it to you that easily. To find my father’s notebook, we must at least go on a small adventure together. With that said, here is where our last adventure begins. Go to the garden where the roses rise.

P.S: This is your grandmother’s recipe. Fresh flowers please!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup rye flour

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