The Dahlias are alive, but She is not

Usually several souls at a time would populate the shop when the weather was foul. The day before, it was sunny, the first day of spring. The whole week in fact, had been sunny, and the forecast for the weekend was rain. The rain had come.

Typically the signs of spring, along with rain meant an onslaught of customers. Yet, consumer behavior had become near unpredictable since the pandemic of 2020. What was once routine trends of business had become a graph of unpatterned spikes and plateaus.

    The mix of grey and rain made it harder to get out of bed in the morning. Several hours had passed since she arrived at work. Maybe that’s why no one has come in today, she thought as she stared out the wide front windows. The world seemed to lack in color what the sun made up for on brighter days. Her eyes diverted to a different brightness: a push notification pop-up on her phone for flight prices to the Carribean. I need to turn off the “Mind-Reader” setting for advertisements. Her fingertips traced the cracks on the screen of her phone as she reflected on the fissures of socialization due to technology.

    “Hey.” Her boss interrupted the melancholy spell. “I know things have been slow,” she started, pausing, seeming to not know how to end her sentence, thus proceeding with cautiousness, “but I need more of an effort from you to be here on time or early.”

    “No one is even here,” she replied, with too much haste, not considering the blunt nor flat tone of her response.

    “Please,” her boss again gave a dramatic pause, “please take this seriously. It’s been a couple days now where you’ve been late.” She paused, hoping for a response, instead falling into awkward silence. “There was a lot I had to do on my own this morning with opening. I just need extra hands, and you are my extra hands.”

    “Have you talked to my brother recently?” Her boss tilted her head, unsure of the intended point in the abrupt change of thought.

    “Of course. He is my husband. Why are you bringing him up?” She crossed her arms, inquisitive about the question.

    “I don't know,” she responded as her eyes surveyed the floor for an answer. With her mouth ajar it was obvious that she did know, and had more to offer, but was unwilling to.

They sat in more awkward silence, which proved too much to bear as her boss wanted to get back to business. Unsure how to break the tension she thought an assignment would be the best way to dismiss her. “Could you please check on the flowers out back? I think it’s time we cut come more and make some bouquets.”

    “Okay,” she said, with continued flatness. She slyly, but without secret, slipped her phone into her pocket and they each went in opposite directions. She made her way to the greenhouse. As she walked through the aisles, the tips of her fingers softly caressed the many petaled, silent organisms. Just past the mixed collection of pottery was the greenhouse where she found herself in the midst of the many flowers. It was where she felt most safe. Because in the absence of rational souls moving throughout the quiet flower shop, she never felt alone surrounded by incredibly large, pom-pom sized peonies, intricate orchids, the majestic daylilies, the half rainbow of zinnias, fragrant gardenias, the mixed greens of eucalyptus, myrtle, ferns, succulents, and English ivies. Each one was like family, filled with memories and emotional connection. Yet, none of them held the dark, beautiful nostalgia and sentiment which she had for the dahlia; both a comfort and a curse. She loved the variety of colors and sizes, the way they stood surprisingly tall in contrast to other big flowers. More tactilely, she was smitten by the way the many petals softly bounced against her fingers as she traced from the outermost petals, in towards the tight, little, green bud.

The mix of dahlias were of yellow, orange, pink, white, bright red, lavender, and dark crimson. As she held one of the blooms in her palm, ready to be cut, she recalled the many times she watched her grandmother cut a bouquet of dahlias as gifts for friends and family. Every year her grandmother would visit a local flower shop and buy a different pack of bulbs of a single color. The first year, she started with reds, the next spring, pink, then orange, followed by yellow, and lastly, a pack of dark crimson.

Snip, snip, snip. Three tall, colored flowers were cut. They were her favorite colored dahlias, reminding of sweet summer blooms, filled with the red, pink, and orange, and daily flavored ice pops, also of red, pink, and orange. The dark crimsons and yellows held bittersweet memories, carrying the sweetness of her grandmother’s last two living years, while also marking the memory of her last bloom. 

The nearly black, dark crimson red dahlia flowers all too well symbolized her grandmother. “Fui una bebé muy oscura,” her grandmother once told her. “So dark that mi papá thought I might not be his. But he said that I had his face and feet. He had big feet, so he knew I was his.” She laughed, looking down at her wiggling toes, “And when I was born, they said I cried and screamed so much that I was a dark red. Dark and red. ‘Mi negra roja, mi flor,’ my parents would call me. Their dark red flower.”

She remembered the day her grandmother told her the story of her birth. It was right after planting some dahlias, around the same time of year when she was about to turn fifteen years old. There was nothing to do and they had been stuck at home for several weeks. It was April, 2020, the weekend after Easter, when her grandmother announced their escape to the flower shop to make their annual dahlia trip. 

The flower shop was relatively busy, but dying in comparison to the garden centers at Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Walmart. Everything was on sale that spring, the flower shop struggling to stay open in the midst of a pandemic. All the bright colored dahlias had already been purchased. Either way, most of those colors already sat in the ground at home from years past, her grandmother reasoned. The ones on sale were the only available, the dark crimsons. The bag read “Shadowcat Tubers. Requires full sun. Water regularly.” The picture portrayed a dahlia that looked as big as the sun, standing high above other dahlias of other colors. They grabbed a pack of the bulbs and made their way to the checkout line.

    “Believe it or not, these are my favorite colored dahlias,” her grandmother whispered as they were checking out. The granddaughter had been glued to her new iPhone, but the comment broke her attention.

    “Really, Bela? Then why have you been collecting like every other color?” Her eyes locked on her grandmother, but her gaze was unmet as her grandmother looked off to a high corner of the shop as she recalled why.

    “When I was a little girl my abuela did the same thing, as well as my mamá. I don’t know how far back it goes in my family, but for whatever reason, it has been a tradition to start flower gardens primarily of dahlias. They are a symbol of elegance and strength. We start out by collecting the brighter colors first over a couple years, our own way of showing bright elegance. And once the plot of flowers has been filled with brightness, then we fill in empty spots with the darker dahlias, strength.” They took a couple steps forward as the socially distanced line moved forward. “It is kind of an art really,” she said with an increase of animation. She waved her right hand, palm facing the ceiling, from left to right, looking at the space she waved through as if a dissolving rainbow remained in its place. “Plus, I guess it was something only really passed on from mother to daughter, and since I only had my one son, tu papá, I never did it with him.” Her sight finally drifted downwards to meet her granddaughter’s gaze, finally making eye contact, “You,” her stare intensified, “You are my daughter, mi amor, my flower. So I pass this tradition to you. No pressure,” she said with a wink.

Her granddaughter, her daughter. The words sank deep, like the bulbs they would later plant, and roots that would grow. The moment immortalized by the familial tradition of producing a dahlia garden. They came back home, elderly mother and teenage daughter; two flowers, planted in different years, yet nearly the same. Different color, shape, and size, but same family, genus, species.

Upon arriving home, they went straight to the flower garden plot and dug six-inch deep holes. The ground still moist from rain that snuck through the night before. The bulbs were buried and covered. The earth leaving a lingering aroma on the hands that dug. The spot marked by a small stake that came in the bag of tubers.

After a few weeks, thick, green stems popped through the ground from both the new and already planted bulbs. Later that summer, the buds came as per usual. However, her grandmother never saw the bloom of the shadowcat flower. Like a flower without sun or water, she quickly wilted away from complications due to a horrific virus.

A six-foot deep plot was dug. The casket, lowered, buried covered in dirt. Store-bought, dahlia-centered bouquets swarmed the tombstone; elegant and strong. The big polished rock read, “Here lies Dahlia Maria Cruz.”