Affections and flowers

It was in this moment the other day where I found myself falling into a trance while eating granola. I was grabbing some breakfast before work and just lookin' around at the people surrounding me when my eye caught a 60-something women out the window pushing a cart. The cart was filled to the rim with flowers, from afar looking like bundles of broken crayons, and she was attempting to maneuver it around with only one had and some coffee in the other. She was dressed in all white, from her pants to her top.  I always thought people dressed in all white had something to say. Obviously, most of the people we know in all white are just dying to say "I do." but I think there are a select few that intentionally put on a white outfit in the morning with a dab of intention. 

Anyway, her cart dipped into curve of a drain and her cart swiveled around like a tire swing. For a second, I scanned the easiest pathway to the door because I was considering running outside to help her save all her beautiful crayola flowers. But she got her shit together and even flipped her hair once to show her cool control of the situation. I wondered to myself if she was a buddhist. 

I loved everything about that woman. I loved her Jackie O glasses and her milk linen pants suit. I loved that her pushing cart was so full with flowers that she didn't even have a few inches available to put down her coffee inside it. I've always thought that as women age they develop this extraordinary appreciation for flowers. Over ever little painted petal, they swoon. Patting seeds into brown dirt under oversized floppy hats. I'll be washing my hands in a public bathroom and two or three women under the age of 30 will walk past me and into their chosen stall. But the 65 year old women with Audrey Hepburn eyes strolls in there's a gasp as sharp as a knife. "Oh, those are wonderful!" as she walks up parallel to me and touches and smells the butter yellow flowers resting in a vase between the sinks. I gave a scrunched-nose smile and directed my eyes to the pained expression in the mirror. Maybe pained isn't the right word. I was softened and moved and it showed in the face that was trying to hold back unnecessary tears. I just love people's affections. Even the little ones, to objects like flowers. The affections that shoot out of mouths to the sky. That big blue drape can't send any I love yous back but it certainly blushes come sun down. 

I sat and stared at that dipped part of the parking lot where the drain pulls down the concrete for a good 10 minutes after the women in white drove away. I liked her so much. For no particular reason, really. Maybe because she had a cart full of flowers. Maybe because she was dressed in all white. Maybe because when her cart was swiveling, I expected her to loose all control and for her cart to topple over and all her flowers to withdraw from their pots and go flying across the pavement while her cup of coffee spilled streaks of brown across her bone white outfit. But instead, she flipped her gray blonde hair, pushed her Jackie O sunglasses farther up the bridge of her nose and drove away. Maybe that's why.