That Smile

Wintertime is always a dreadful time for flowers. If the romantic in me had any common sense, I would have asked her to marry me in late June and then married her a month or so later. Unfortunately, the blindness so common in love affected my awareness of the planet’s seasons and I asked my girl for her hand on Christmas Day and then twelve months later we married on New Year’s Eve. Oh yes, all jolly and bright to be sure, but she likes flowers…let me rephrase that…absolutely loves flowers…and nothing brightens her smile more than a huge bouquet of them. I am a sucker for that smile.

She is a funny creature about flowers. Quite pedantic. While most women seem to adore roses and carnations, my little queen likes the “little” flowers. The ever-popular scarlet roses may get a slight nod of acknowledgement on a good day, while sunflowers would not even get a glance…not even if they were ten feet tall and as yellow as the paint on our barn (yes, our barn is yellow…bright yellow…a story for another day). No, it’s the little flowers that receive all the attention and adoration from my girl.

Especially the marigolds.

Nothing brings a smile to the face of my gorgeous girl than the sight of the bright yellow bloom of a marigold. It was not just a “marigold” either. I learned…not as quickly as I should have…that there are marigold and then there are marigolds. There are African marigolds. There are French marigolds. There are Signet marigolds which apparently you can eat (if you were on another continent located at least 1000 nautical miles away and protected by the Russian army from one particular female who is fiercely protective of such flowers…you get my drift!). If I happen to mention these blooms or enter a discussion about them, I am always exhorted to refer to them “properly” and use their names so she knew precisely which marigolds I was talking about. I learned and acted accordingly. Not so much because of her reproof at my lack of blossom intelligence, but rather because of that smile. When I would come home from work and see the first bloom of our Mexican marigolds…see, I didn’t just say marigold…and I would step inside and call out to her excitedly…oh wow…that smile…she didn’t just smile with her lips or her mouth…she smiled with her whole face. There is nothing more beautiful…more perfect on this entire earth than that smile. Not even a marigold. Any marigold. Did I say I was a sucker for that smile?

The only thing marigolds do not like is cold. I mean, really, I cannot think of a single flower that has any form of affinity for the cold. Wintertime is pretty much characterized by the absence of flowers…or even leaves for that matter. It meant for us that the autumn season required a very detailed but certainly not arduous task of potting a copious amount of flowers and putting them into the “winter house”. No, not a greenhouse…it is definitely the “winter house”. As you saw with my lessons regarding marigold names, my girl is quite adamant on the labeling of plants and those things associated with them, including their accommodation. A green house is akin to a prison, while a winter house is simply a temporary dwelling…a hospice, if you will. As such, her flower’s time in the winter house commenced just before the first predicted frost and ended as soon as she was sure “in her bones” that Spring had definitely made his entry into the year. No flower ever stayed in the winter house longer than absolutely necessary.

But going back to wintertime…now that you have come to know my bride a little better…you can only imagine the time I had trying to find the appropriate blossoms of romance on…of all days…New Year’s Eve. Florist shops mirrored the Sahara Desert. Nurseries only had petunias, 15 foot trees and whatever was left of the hundreds of plants that had some form of red flower, red leaf, or some remote connection to the life of Saint Nicholas. Every year, I have left work earlier and earlier in the day to find her those flowers…the ones that bring that smile! I am such a sucker for that smile!

Today I did not even go to work. The propensity of the task on this final day of the year requires too much time to be bothered with the trivial things in life…like work. I advised Jeffries of this yesterday and he is used to my traditional scouring of the countryside every New Year’s Eve. He has never had an issue with it, and nothing changed with him this year either.

It has been a long day but definitely worth it. I found them…”tagetes tenuifolia” I was proudly told by the old farmer. He had tended them himself with “one of them heat lamp things” and a “bit of watering” every day. The amount he wanted for the blossoms indicated he had probably given up piracy on the high seas only recently, but, like I said, I’m a sucker for that smile and expenditure was irrelevant.

I set them down carefully…just the way she likes. It’s already dark outside and as usual, I am convinced the coldest day of the year is the last day of the year. I knew these marigolds…Signet Marigolds…their full and rightful name…would bring that smile. The most beautiful smile…unparalleled…unequalled…not just on earth now, but also in heaven. I looked down at yellow petals almost shining in the moonlight casting tiny shadows on the snow below them. They almost looked exactly the same shape as the marigolds I had them etch into her stone. Oh, I know without a doubt, she would have seen these and just fallen in love with them immediately. Each leaf would be gently examined, and she would ever so tenderly caress each blossom. Then she would look up at me with that smile…that incredible smile that lit this entire earth for the past seventy-two years. I am a sucker for that smile.