MOM'S MEAN ROSE

My mother loved flowers. All flowers—wildflowers, garden flowers, flowers in low-to-the-ground clumps or adorning tall stalks, flowers on vines and shrubs and trees…big, small, bright, demure, there wasn't a bloom of any sort that I ever heard her say she didn't like. And she was especially fond of roses.

One of her favorite roses—perhaps her most favorite—was an old pink rambler of indeterminate name and origin, that grew along the fence in the front yard. This rose only bloomed once, in late spring, but it did so in stunning profusion—hundreds of pale pink blossoms, some as wide across as your hand. The flowers had no scent to speak of, and when they faded and fell, that was it for the year, though the leaves remained a shiny, deep green—the darkest green of any rosebush I know—throughout the summer and most of the fall. Too, the bush was healthy, virtually immune to bugs and diseases that often plagued the other rose varieties in the yard, and a vigorous grower. Almost too vigorous.

Mom loved this rose. However, she also said it was the "meanest" plant she knew.

Yes, that's an odd word. A strange term for characterizing a plant. Plants might be described as pretty, nondescript, fussy, or tolerant…but mean? And Mom meant the word in the sense of vicious, aggressive, ill-tempered. An odd word, indeed. More appropriate, you'd say, for speaking of a junkyard dog. Plants—roses—aren't mean.

Wrong! This rose was mean. That's absolutely the best word. Vicious, aggressive, ill-tempered—like a pink-spotted dragon with distemper. You couldn't walk within a dozen feet of that plant without it drawing your blood! Mowing anywhere close without getting nailed was impossible. Cutting a few flowers was like going into battle—and the rose invariably won. Long sleeves, heavy jeans, gloves, nothing including full body armor afforded any protection. The thorns were huge, innumerable, sharp as daggers, and set at an angle so that when you barely touched one, you immediately drew the cane and its hundreds of other thorns onto your clothing and flesh. 

From the end of one winter to the start of the next, everyone wore the rosebush's wounds on their arms, legs, neck, cheeks, and sometimes elsewhere—a distinctive series of punctures, like lines of stitching from an oversized needle, and either oozing blood or sporting a dark scab, depending on the stage of healing. Scare tissue around our wrists was inevitable.

Still, Mom continued to love this rose; Dad, too, or at least he tolerated it, and was usually the one to give it a good trimming every couple of years, least it ramble into the the neighboring yards…and perhaps up the street, throughout the community, to eventually take over the township. As I said, it was a vigorous grower. 

I write about this rose today for several reasons—first, because it's now in bloom; second, because come Memorial Day every year—which Mom called Decoration Day—we'd gird our bodies as best we could, and brave the onslaught of this meanest rose, snipping blooms as we yelped and wailed, amid much pain and suffering, until we either had the necessary bushel or so of flowers needed for placing on the graves of family members, or else were running too dangerously low on blood to continue. 

Funny the way certain memories stick. Come Memorial Day, I can't help but remember this "meanest" rose and what we regularly faced to gather its blooms. Then there's also the fact I brought cuttings from that rosebush and planted them beside the cottage, when they now thrive—and I plan on taking a few cut flowers from them along when Myladylove and I go to decorate the family graves later today.

In more ways than one, I think Mom and Dad will appreciate the gesture.

———————                                   

MOM

Mom was happy-go-lucky, always bubbling with humor, and invested with a practical-joker streak which, given her pious demeanor, could—and often did—catch you by surprise if you weren’t paying attention.

One of my very earliest memories is of a Saturday afternoon, not long after my third birthday, during a family outing to a favorite woods near Twin Creek. It was late spring. Dad decided to head downhill and fish. Mom and I stayed near the car. She sat on a log while I toddled about, plucking wildflowers and playing in the damp leaves.

After a while, Mom called me over and asked if I’d like a cookie. When I nodded, she reached into her purse and proffered a yellow-and-black treat—which I opened wide to accept. The tiny box turtle, scarcely larger than a silver dollar, stuck its head from its carapace a millisecond before entering my mouth—just in time for me to catch a glimpse of its dragon-like countenance.

The unexpected sight sent me into a screaming fit—part terror, part rage, but mostly frustration over being denied the promised cookie. My howling wails so tickled Mom that she fell off the log amid gales of laughter, while bringing my father huffing up the hill to deal with whatever trauma had instigated such a clamor.

The baby box turtle was eventually released unharmed, though my ego never quite recovered. And fifty-odd years later, Mom still got a kick and a laugh out of teasing me about the “turtle-cookie” incident. Humor, laughter, and fun, Mom taught me, should always be a part of all life—and by extension, part of the outdoors.

My father, while not overly serious, was at least generally thoughtful, more contemplative. A scholar and logician. Dad was the nuts-and-bolts guy, the one who taught me the mechanics and technicalities of fishing for crappie, hunting gray squirrels, digging sassafras, tying a trout fly, fashioning an axe handle, or skinning out a muskrat. Mother, on the other hand, tended more towards guiding my attitude—though she also enriched my education by instructing me in such outdoor practicalities as cooking dandelion greens, frying catfish, canning blackberry preserves, or using the walnuts we gathered each fall to bake a flavorful cake delicious beyond description.

Like my father, Mom grew up on a farm in eastern Kentucky. She hoed corn on the hillsides. Read by the light of a coal oil lamp. Cooked on a woodstove. She knew how to butcher a hog, can peaches, churn butter, and spin sheep’s wool into thread which could then be put on a loom and turned into cloth. Mom loved the country, country ways, and country people. She loved telling and hearing stories. And throughout her ninety-four years of life, she never wavered in this love of the hills and its simple, honest values.

Mom taught me to love and understand old times, old ways, old places and things. She also taught me to appreciate beauty.

“Listen to that redbird sing,” she’d say, a hundred times each year. Her face would radiate the joy she found in the bird’s sprightly song. Should the brilliant cardinal alight within sight, perhaps in the middle of Mom’s favorite window-side rose tangle, her happiness was increased exponentially.

Mom found beauty in everything from wildflowers to sunsets, singing birds, buzzing bees, the hoot of and owl or a croaking frog. She liked hearing rain on the roof and the growl of thunder off in the distance. She loved fall’s patchwork colors. New snow. Lightening bugs twinkling a summer meadow. Fragrant apple blossoms in the spring.

“There’s beauty everywhere,” Mom said. “Just look around.”

Parents are like ears, in that we each receive a pair without any choice whatsoever in the matter. I was the luckiest kid in the world, blessed beyond measure in my gift of parents…and the older I get, the more apparent this fact becomes.

I was born on a Saturday, the day before Mother’s Day. Mom always claimed I was her Mother’s Day present. “The best-ever gift,” she said.

Personally, I think I got the better deal. Mom’s spirit was indomitable. Her joy irrepressible. Her love immeasurable. She taught me attitudes and values which still shape and enrich my life and outdoor experience every single day.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you with all my heart. Miss you every single day. Appreciate all you did—the tears you shed and sacrifices you made.

More than anything in this world, Mom, I’m honored and forever thankful to be your son.

———————