> A WHITE GARDENIA
> by Marsha Aaron
>
> Every year on my birthday
> from the time I turned 12,
> a white gardenia
> was delivered to my house.
> No card or note
> was ever attached to it,
> and calls to the florist
> were always in vain.
>
> After a while
> I stopped trying to discover
> the identity of the sender
> and just delighted in the beauty
> and heady perfume of that
> one magical, perfect white flower
> nestled in soft pink tissue paper.
>
> I never stopped imagining
> who the anonymous sender might be,
> and some of my happiest moments
> were spent daydreaming about
> someone wonderful and exciting
> perhaps too shy to make
> his or her identity known.
>
> My mother would contribute
> to these imaginings.
>
> She would ask
> if there were someone for whom
> I had shown a special kindness,
> a neighbor I may have helped
> or the elderly man across the street
> whose mail I picked up for him
> so he wouldn't take the chance
> of getting hurt on icy mornings.
>
> As a teen-ager,
> I had more fun speculating
> that it might be a boy I had a crush on
> or one who had noticed me.
>
> When I was 17
> a boy broke my heart
> and I cried myself asleep.
>
> When I awoke in the morning,
> there was a message
> written on my mirror in red lipstick.
>
> Kindly know
> when half-gods go,
> true gods will arrive.
>
> I read that message often
> until my heart healed
> and when I finally went
> to get the glass cleaner,
> my mother knew everything
> was all right again.  
>
> One month before
> my high school graduation
> my father died of a heart attack,
> and I lost all interest in everything.
>
> My mother
> in the midst of her own grief
> would not let me miss the prom.
>
> The day before my father died
> my mother and I had gone
> shopping for a prom dress.
> We found a spectacular one
> with yards and yards of dotted swiss
> in red white and blue
> that made me feel like Scarlet O'Hara,
> but it was the wrong size.
>
> When my father died
> I forgot all about the dress.
>
> My mother did not.
>
> The day before the prom
> I found the very same dress,
> in the right size,
> draped majestically
> over the living room sofa.
> It wasn't just delivered in a box,
> but presented to me
> beautifully, artistically, lovingly.
>
> I didn't care if I had a dress or not,
> but my mother did.
>
> She wanted me to feel loved and lovable,
> creative and imaginative,
> imbued with a sense that
> there was magic in the world
> and beauty even in the face of adversity.
>
> She wanted me
> and her other children
> to see ourselves
> much like the gardenia,
> lovely, strong and perfect
> with an aura of magic
> and perhaps a bit of mystery.
>
> My mother died ten days
> after I got married.
>
> I was 22
> and that was the year
> the gardenias stopped coming.