Forget Me Not

Blue flowers grow in my windowsill. They stretch like antennas toward sunlight on the other side of the glass pane. When the window is open, the summer air delivers hints of rich soil, peach, and mandarin along with a memory I can’t entirely piece together. I don’t remember where the flowers came from, but I do know they bring me a feeling of rare nostalgia and joy, especially when I see them dancing in the breeze. 

“Do you know where these flowers came from?”

The woman turns and stares at me for a moment. She’s middle-aged, has brown, curly hair that bounces on her shoulders, and bright blue eyes. She doesn’t answer my question, but I see she’s speaking to another woman with a clipboard and a firm voice. 

I see the lady with curly hair walk out through the wooden doorway of my room leaving me alone with the other woman. The woman with the clipboard is tall and skinny, with short, dark hair, and she smiles at me as I rock in my chair. 

I can hear the sound of music coming from down the hallway. 

When I was a child, my mother would play Dean Martin’s “Pretty Lady” on an old antique record player that sat in the kitchen. She would open the window while she gardened so the notes of the music would drift through the air like the seeds of a dandelion.

Her bright yellow rubber gloves, fingertips stained with soil, would reflect off her handheld shovel as she dug into the earth. My father traveled most of the year for work as a fisherman, but he would always bring back the most beautiful blue flowers as a gift for my mother. These flowers lined our front yard throughout most of the year and were always replaced with more by my mother when they withered and died. 

A tall woman with a clipboard enters my room. She has shoulder length hair and wears a light jacket. As I look out the window, I notice blue flowers on the windowsill. The petals are wilted and droop toward the clay pot they root in. Snowflakes reflect off a streetlight from outside. 

The noise of footsteps through my doorway pulls my attention to a shorter woman with brown, curly hair. She sits down across from me and glances toward the windowsill. 

“Do you know whose flowers these are?”

The woman glances back and forth between me and the flowers. She looks a little shocked, or maybe confused, I can’t tell which. She smiles at me with an uncomfortable look on her face, and says: “They were a gift from me.” 

I remember walking home after school one day. I had decided to take a new path home as the same walk each day began to bore me. Plus, the weather outside was too perfect to rush home. After walking for much longer than it should have taken me to get back home, I realized that I was lost. 

It took me nearly twenty minutes to find my way back home. I remember turning a corner and looking down the street at a house surrounded by bright, blue flowers. It reminded me of my father’s stories about boats at sea. In the middle of the night or during a great storm, the captain would look for a lighthouse to guide them safely back into the harbor. I still remember the scared look on my mother’s face as she pulled off her yellow gloves finger by finger and ran to hug me. 

“Do you remember me?” a woman with curly hair says. 

“I’m very sorry. I don’t think I do, dear.”  

It’s frustrating though because she does look familiar. Like I have seen her on TV or maybe in the newspaper. Maybe I’ve dreamt about her. 

I met my wife when I was just twenty-two years old. I had just gotten a job as a mechanic at Hugh’s Auto down the street from a beaten down apartment I called home. While working on a broken down 57’ Chevy, the bell attached to the front door of the shop rang. A young girl around my age walks into the shop. 

“Do you do oil changes here?” she asks.

“Yes, we do ma’am. Just put down your information here including a phone number and we can get you scheduled.”

This wasn’t exactly true. We didn’t need a phone number on file, but quick thinking on my part meant I could call her and ask her to dinner. Months later when I told Claire this, she hit me on the arm and smiled. I love that smile. 

“Have you seen Claire anywhere? I don’t think she’s eaten breakfast today,” I ask the lady in front of me. I notice she’s talking to another woman, but she’s not Claire either. 

I rock back and forth in my chair and look around the room for her. I see a single bed with a wooden nightstand next to it. There’s a table side lamp next to the bed and just a few steps away, a windowsill. On that windowsill, a pot of fresh blue flowers absorbing rays of sunlight from outside. 

“Mr. Franklin,” a woman with a clipboard says. 

“Call me Charlie.” 

The woman with the clipboard smiles at first, and then she doesn’t.

“I’m so sorry Charlie, but Claire passed away two years ago. Do you remember speaking about that yesterday?” 

“That’s terribly sad.”

It’s an odd sensation forgetting something in one moment and then remembering it the next. I knew Claire had passed away. At least, I thought I did. 

The two women begin to speak quietly to one another. 

The flowers on the windowsill would look great in a garden, just like my mother used to have. 

“I thought the flowers would help him remember something, anything.” 

“At this stage, memory loss and confusion are expected to get worse as the brain cell connections degenerate.”

The lady with the brown curly hair and bright blue eyes looks at me again, but I don’t know what she wants. 

“Can you remember to water the flowers?” 

“Yes.” 

“My name is Cynthia, I’m your daughter. Do you remember me?”

Her bright blue eyes are different now, wet and glistening. She’s holding back tears, but I don’t know why. Of course I remember she’s my daughter.

“I’m sorry Cynthia, I must be tired today.” I stand from my rocking chair and walk over to the windowsill. Drooping flowers sit in a pot that overlooks the sunlit neighborhood. A calm breeze brushes across my face. 

I hear footsteps from behind and then a warm embrace. A fragrance of peach and mandarin fills my nostrils and reminds me of my mother, Claire, and my daughter. 

Tears fill my eyes now, but I’m not too sure why. I’m sad and someone is hugging me from behind. Her perfume is a little overpowering. 

She whispers goodbye in my left ear, and I watch her walk out the doorway. A woman with a clipboard stays in the room with me. 

“Are you ready for dinner?”

The sun outside the window has already set, stars fill the night sky twinkling even stronger from behind the glass pane. 

“I could eat something.”

I begin to walk away, when something catches my eye. I turn back to see a pot resting on the windowsill. 

“Do you know where these flowers came from? They’re my favorite.”