The Language of Flowers

I just finished the big arrangement. It took me a while because the woman who made it was very specific about what she wanted and wasn’t the kind of customer who could be told “This flower will look horrific next to that one”. It’s for her daughter’s first baby so what can you do? There’s no telling some people. They think choosing the right flower is easy, but every flower and arrangement can say something. Sometimes it feels like the mood I’m in transfers into the flowers as I arrange them. Maybe that woman’s arrangement seems off to me because she put me off. Flowers are, I think in some ways, more sensitive to how others feel than people.

When people are handled poorly they may try to hide it, they may lash out, or they’ll just retreat quietly into a flower shop. It wasn’t ijime or anything like that. It wasn’t anything so obvious. I just didn’t feel like I fit in some ways. That I was separate from my classmates but I had no idea really why and neither did they. They’d sometimes tlak about me like I wasn’t even there. I didn’t really factor in to their language or how they think about the world. We were high school students then and I should have been used to it but one day it just broke. I didn’t go home right after school. I wandered the main drag of Hiroshima city feeling separate from everything. I know what the teachers say about me. I’m quiet. I keep to myself. I don’t have many friends. But I get good grades at least so I don’t raise too many questions. My school is big anyway, 8 classes per grade so it’s easy for me to blend in. I was walking past this store and I noticed an older man in the window. He didn’t say anything to me but I sat, transfixed, watching him arrange flowers. He had the most serene expression, like he was above it all but because he chose to be rather than just being outed. I must have stayed there for an hour or so just watching him. When we both finally came out of our trances he asked me if I was going to buy something and I ran away. I thought maybe if I could do that then maybe I could feel that measure of peace that he had.

I came back everyday, of course. I would usually hide behind some bigger displays and run when he would catch me. But I started hearing him talk to himself, explaining what he was doing. One day said if I kept coming in here he was going ot put me to work. He offered me a baito for the spring and summer. I was mostly on the register but he would teach me about different flowers during breaks. I find flowers easier and more responsive than people. People can change easily but flowers are very upfront about their natures. A delicate flower looks delicate and instantly lets you know if you offend it. A stubborn flower will consistently refuse to bend to your will. They make sense to me in a way that people don’t. I’m older now. I’m not part time. I work in the shop and it’s understood I’ll inherit it when the owner finally dies. My parents don’t like it. They want something more stable, I mean what if he leaves me in debt and I’m foced to pay it off. But I trust the owner. He’s shrewd and does good business. To him, it is all about the flowers and the business of flowers. I ownder if the cycle will repeat itself, if one day I’ll be arranging flowers and I’ll see a young boy and I’ll slowly start drawing him out, teaching him, becoming his pseudo father. In my head I have a story of this being how the flower shop has carried on for decades. I know it’s not the truth but I kind of wish it was.

Ijime- bullying
Baito- the shortened form of “arubaito” which is the Japanese word (borrowed from German) for part time job.
There’s a flower shop near the hotel I like to stay at in Hiroshima. I’ve passed it many times but I’m always in too much of a hurry to stop in and I don’t know if it’s bad manners to go in and buy flowers instead of ordering an arrangement. But when I walk past I always see the same youngish man in the window. He is looking very intently at something or he always seems very busy even if no one is in the store at the moment. I’ve never seen the old man I mention in the story. Now that I’ve written the story I’m too afraid to go in because I feel bad printing stories of people I actually know something about.