Ugly flowers

Matt, Asher, Asa and I took a little day trip to Williamsburg the last time we visited my parents. 

Along the way we stopped at an antique mall just to poke around. Asher, being a typical 5-year old, wasn’t exactly ecstatic about the stop. I can remember feeling that same sense of dread as a kid riding in the back seat of my parents’ car, passing antique store after antique store and just knowing – KNOWING – my dad was bound to pull into one of them. Then it was just up and down aisles of dusty old knick-knacks I didn’t recognize, trying not to sigh too loudly lest I be labeled impatient. I totally get it, Asher.

So when Asher asked what kinds of things were at this store, I did my best to talk it up. Still, one step inside he knew this was, like, the opposite of a Toys ‘R Us in regard to the excitement factor. I sympathized, remembering.

Matt told Asher we could walk around and maybe we’d find a small toy that Asher could take home as a souvenir. I could see the doubt flicker across those blue eyes, yet he managed to put on a brave face and feign excitement. I appreciated the effort.

We split up – me rolling the baby in the stroller to ward off the baby sounds that echoed through the quiet place like he was hiding a little megaphone in there and Matt searching for a birthday present for his dad, with Asher in tow.

“When you see something you like,” Matt told Asher, “we’ll write it down on this piece of paper. Then when we’re all done looking, you can go back through the list and pick one thing to buy.”

Matt is extremely clever when it comes to keeping Asher’s attention focused on a task and not on how long the task is taking. Or maybe he’s just good at fooling Asher into thinking we’re really looking around this giant antique store for his benefit. Either way, Asher was into it.

After a while – longer than I thought they’d last – we met up to discuss the potential birthday gift ideas. Matt chose some antique books for his dad (which unfortunately suffered a terrible fate after getting them back to Bermuda) and Asher had a list of about five potential things. I glanced over the list:

Toy car

Toy truck

Treasure chest

Flowers

Robot

“Does this say ‘flowers’?” I ask Matt quietly.

He shakes his head and suppresses a smile. “Yup.”

Asher, without looking at the list, begins remembering aloud all the things he had had his daddy record onto the List of Possibilities.

Inexplicably, he asks, “Can we go look at those flowers again?”

So Matt leads the way past aisle after aisle until we reach the flowers. And there, sitting atop an antique buffet is a dusty green basket holding the ugliest, worst-looking fake flowers I have ever seen. The flowers did look real, I had to admit, but that was only due to the fact that they looked dead. Why would fake flowers look dead? Who would buy fake dead flowers? Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose of fake flowers?

I was about to say as much until I saw the look on Asher’s face as he held that old beat-up basket of fake dead flowers. It was a look of pure pride.

“I choose these.”

I looked at Matt. He was staring at Asher, who suddenly looked pitiful standing there in the giant antique store where his parents had forced him to spend the last hour, holding those ugly flowers.

“Are you sure you don’t want one of these other things on the list?” Matt scans the paper in his hand. “The truck? Or maybe the robot? That was pretty cool.”

“No,” Asher says simply, with a strange smile on his face. “This is what I want.”

And he walks over to me carrying that green basket, positively beaming. “Don’t you think they’re pretty?”

“Okay,” Matt says, and we make our way to the counter.

“I want to carry it to the car after we buy it,” Asher says.

The whole way up to the counter, the whole time Matt is forking over the ridiculous amount of money listed on the price tag of those awful flowers, the entire time the lady behind the cash register is painstakingly removing the price tag and placing the flowers gently into a bag, I am thinking this is the biggest waste of money we have ever known. And I am also silently cursing the owner of that antique booth who is obviously watching us from some hidden place and laughing hysterically at us, the suckers who spent $12 on a piece of junk that should have been thrown away.

The entire 45-minute drive home I am still wondering why on earth a 5-year old boy would choose something like that when he was offered several other things that would’ve made a lot more sense. Asher sits in the back seat, quietly playing a game on the iPad, that beat-up basket of flowers sitting on the seat next to him like another passenger.

Why would my son buy something so weird? Is there something wrong with him? Why would a 5-year old boy pick something like that? Why? Does he have some sort of psychological issue? Have I done something to make him want to bring home fake dead flowers instead of a toy truck? Is it because I sometimes let him watch Tinkerbell movies on the Disney Channel?

I’m having a silent mental breakdown as we pull into the driveway, and Asher carries those ugly flowers upstairs to his room. Then I hear him calling me. He wants me to come see where he has put the flowers.

I trudge upstairs and into his room, and there I see him standing, hands on his hips, a big smile on his face. There is nothing else but sheer pride. There is no other way to describe it.

Then he says, “Aren’t these flowers beautiful?”

I nod. (Is that the same as lying?)

“I just wanted to get something to decorate my room instead of getting another toy,” he says, his little blonde head tilted up at me. Then he adds, “Because, you know, I’m a big boy now, and I wanted to decorate my room. Don’t you think I made a good choice?”

That’s when I finally get it. I kneel down and I hug that sweet boy so long and so hard that he asks why.

“Because I love you so much.”

He smiles.

Asher didn’t choose those flowers because he wanted flowers. I’m pretty sure he would’ve rather had any of the other things on his list. He chose them for my benefit.

He chose them because decorating your room is something big boys do. Little boys choose toy robots or trucks.

Asher was so proud of his purchase that it was the first thing he told Grandma about when she got home from work that day. She reacted in exactly the right way, with awe over how “beautiful” those flowers were, and surprise that Asher would pick something so grown-up. He just stood there silently smiling that proud smile, hands clasped behind his back. Occasionally he sneaked a glance in my direction to see if I was listening to the praise Grandma showered him with.

Now those flowers have such a sweet association that I’m not sure I could ever get rid of them. When I look at them I see my baby boy growing up, I see a sweet boy who wants to please his mama.

And I also see an old lady somewhere laughing at the poor sucker who paid $12 for those nasty old flowers she had on display in her booth at the antique mall.