If you listen, tulips and books speak volumes
I am standing at my kitchen sink talking to the purple tulips relaxing in a water bath.
They move gracefully in the elegant, cut glass vase that was a wedding present from my late friend Tonie. Not that being married in her rose garden wasn't already enough of a present. One of the tulips collapsed onto the mouth of the vase as I spoke. I love that about tulips. When their time is up, they are as ballerinas folding over gracefully and taking a final bow. No tears. No upsets. No attempts to prolong life.
“Please know that if tulips were in season when we got married, I would have happily floated down a tulip-filled aisle,” I tell the remaining flowers. I want them to know my story, as it is a part of their story. I wait quietly for a response, content to sponge off the tile counter. I am ending my day in my way and I wish for them to do the same. This is the part of “storying” that is golden.
I don't know how the notion came to me that the teller of a tale need not be human. But once I discovered it, I had no choice but to write. If only I could hear the stories then only I could write them, or so I believed.
“Are you happy on this shelf with other poets?” I might ask my book of Emily Dickinson's verse. “Or would you like to sit with novelists for a while?”
One can only imagine the complexity of organizing my bookshelves. And yet it brings me joy to know that in some fashion — and it's different every time — I will get an answer. Most writers probably have a version of this notion secreted in their psyches. And it just keeps getting more interesting. That's why we keep writing.
At 101, columnist Roy Roberts is a good example. He has been writing a weekly column for nearly 70 years for the
Cass County Star Gazette in Beardstown, Illinois. Wow. As I celebrate my 14th year of writing Senior Moments, he has inspired me to keep going. But the true inspiration has been the wonderful readers who have embraced a woman who talks to tulips.