I Don’t Like Roses
…Or Do I?
I don't buy roses. Like…Ever…
In fact, when Jay and I started dating, I said don't waste your money on roses, I'm not a roses girlie.
Then, I bought roses on Sunday.
Pink ones with pink Snapdragons. Thirty-six dollars worth, if anyone is keeping score, and apparently someone is, because Jay has not stopped bringing it up for two days now.
“I remember when you told me,” he keeps saying, “that of all the flowers I could ever buy you, I should never buy you roses.”
No shit. I know what I said.
Here is the thing about being fifty that nobody quite explains. You are allowed to change your mind. Not in the dramatic, identity-overhaul, throw-out-the-old-life way. Just in the small ways. The ways that look from the outside like a contradiction (or that you've possibly forgotten your own rules) and from the inside like quiet permission.
I had opinions about flowers, the way people in their twenties have opinions about everything, and roses were not on the approved list. I used to dismiss roses as a flower for people who couldn't be bothered to learn about flowers and love. They were the default flower. The grocery-store apology. The Valentine's cliche.
Once, a very long time ago, someone bought me blood red velveteen roses with a hefty $300+ price tag. They lasted 5 days. I'd have rather had jewelry or a new pair of heels if I'm being honest.
And then on Sunday I walked past a bucket of pink roses and said, “Oh, aren’t those pretty. I bypassed the bright spring mix with the huge sunflower in it and reached for the pink roses. Into the basket they went.
I said Yes, to the roses.
Not a romantic yes. Not a justification, yes. Just a yes. So I bought them. They're enormous and slightly ridiculous and they smell like an English garden on a hot Summer day.
I've enjoyed looking at this arrangement for three days running, and I am not particularly interested in defending the choice to anyone, including the man in my house who is delighted that I've contradicted myself and wants to celebrate it by reminding me I've contradicted myself.
Here's something I'm noticing about my fifties so far.
I am spending money differently. Not more, necessarily. Differently. On the small, unfussy things that turn out to matter. On the better mug instead of the cheap one. On the linen instead of the polyester.
On the roses I previously dismissed because their life-to-math ratio wasn’t mathing.
There is a longer essay underneath this one about why women in midlife start making choices that look strange from the outside, about cultural pulls and what the body remembers and what we finally let ourselves want when we stop pretending to be the person we always thought we were, or needed to be.
[Link to “Coming Home to Myself”]
But for now, today, this Tuesday afternoon, with two vases of pink roses three days into their bloom and Jay still occasionally muttering about my hypocrisy with great affection: I am fine being someone who said she didn't like roses and then bought them. I am more than fine.
People change. The change doesn’t have to be this big thing. Sometimes the change is a rose.
What’s yours?
If this landed, and you still feel like you need “Permission” to change your mind; like it’s not already your prerogative — Then check out this fun “Permission Slip” I made for you“ Permission Slip”
