If I was wealthy, I’d quite like to have a nice garden, maintained by devoted professionals who would remove faded blooms promptly. It is natural that flowers last only a short time, that blooms die, and maybe the right thing is to allow Nature to run its course.
In most instances, I favour non-interference with Nature.
But the sight of dead flowers distresses me.
When visiting my parents in Barbados, I used to walk around the garden first thing every morning with my mum. She snipped off dead blooms and she collected a box of hibiscus buds which were on the point of opening. The box of fresh flowers was placed in the fridge and fetched out again in late afternoon when we were all sitting down for the evening. Then, Mum poked thin bamboo stalks into the hibiscus blooms and arranged them in a large bowl of greenery where they looked wonderful.
As Mum was busy all day, having little time to appreciate her garden, this was the best way for her to enjoy those flowers which lasted but a single day – with the exception, that is, of Two-day pink. I’ve forgotten the number of varieties, but there were many.
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Most of my father’s paintings are still with me as a reminder of that gorgeous tropical garden. Strangely, I never heard my mother say she missed it after they left the island. Perhaps she was better than me at letting go, but she never did express her feelings.
The glass bowl in which the hibiscus were displayed now sits in a corner of our kitchen counter, containing vegetables. I believe it came originally from Madagascar and it travelled from there to the West Indies and England before being shipped to Washington State and finally here, to New York.
Yet there will come a time when it is viewed simply as an ordinary glass bowl.
Does it matter? I’m sure not. It’s just that I am fascinated by the history of objects.
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Their provenance is uncertain, but I have a few coins that are supposed to be old. I am not interested in their worth but I love trying to imagine the hands they will have passed through and the interwoven stories of those people.
In college, I pursued a degree in anthropology because I became fascinated with modern cultures, but I could as easily have chosen archaeology. There was no chance, anyway, for me to make a career in either field, but they still hold my interest.
Some years ago I joined Ancestry.com in the hope of tracing my family tree but I didn’t get far at all. It is asking a lot, with a name like Smith. I used to visit my granddad (father’s father) in a tiny village in Sussex, where he lived in a little row of cottages that I think had once been an alms house. Built in the 1700’s, it was not particularly old, but lying in my bed in the attic, I thought of the people who had occupied that room back then.
What did they care about and dream of? Where did they go and what happened to them? It is unlikely they were relatives. My father, an only child, grew up in a house in Croydon, but I don’t know where the family were before that. Details of my mother’s family are even more sparse. She was the only one of six children to have a family. My brother’s two children do not live even in the same hemisphere, while their dad drifts between three homes . So we are very scattered and this is increasingly the way of our society in this jet-set age.
While I’ve never felt the need to put down roots, I do often feel disconnected, not really belonging in any one place or to any particular people.
Not often, but sometimes it feels a bit sad.
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Thank you, Carolyn, for the thoughtful observations on belonging, ancestry, and life in general.
Joanna
Your father was an excellent painter. I tried to trace my family tree using the Southwark Library microfiche archives. (Long before the Internet) I managed to find my dad’s lineage back to one Henry Johnson, who was listed as being employed as a ‘Horse Handler’, at the famous George Inn in Southwark. That was in the 1760s and I could get no further back, due to parish records being destroyed by bombing in WW2. There was nothing about my mum’s family. Their name was Pallen, and that had probably been unofficially changed from the Swedish name, Pallenberger, which had confused the records.
Best wishes, Pete.
The original part of my house was built in the eighteen hundreds. At times when sitting in the dining or living room I wonder who was sitting in those rooms in the past. Someone replastered the attic chimney in 1915. We have quite a bit of ground, I too wish we had the funds for a professional gardner. For now my mowing, planting and weeding will have to suffice.
Your dad’s paintings are lovely. He could paint beautifully (and if I remember correctly, he could also take great photos), while your mum was a wonderful gardener, and you’re excellent at writing stories and take beautiful photos. Isn’t it wonderful how each of us has something we’re good at?
Just like your mum’s glass bowl, there are also items in our house that won’t mean much to other people but are special to us. What will happen to these when we’re no longer here, I don’t know (but by then it probably won’t really matter anyway).
I hope that feeling of sadness doesn’t stay with you. Those paintings are beautiful.
I, too, did a bit of ancestor truffling and found several family oddities and secrets, including that my uncle was wounded at the Battle of the Somme, and was not the father of my cousin (whom I never met, as the family lived in Canada), and that I am distantly related to the last person beheaded in England.
Goodness! I envy people who can trace their ancestry without being able to explain just why it is important. There is so much to be sad about. Mostly, I live in the NOW.