Flowers That Conjure People

when a certain type of flower reminds me of someone…

Yellow Fresias will always remind me of my aunt Trish.

Yellow, like the yolk of an egg. The colour she was painting the day I walked into the big County Dublin house she lived in with my uncle Gerard and my cousins. She was up a high step ladder adding colour to the white ornamental plaster flowers on the ceiling. As if she was dolloping the centres of these flowers with egg yolk, leaving the petals in their naked white plaster.Years later I found out from my mother, who was with Trish at the end of her life, that yellow Fresias were her favourite. I think they buried her with some, so I imagined yellow Fresias at her funeral. I might be embellishing these memories surrounding her death, dying and funeral, since I was in Seattle at the time. But I imagined the exquisite sweet smell of Fresias, and the golden glow of their aura at her home, at the luncheon thing they do after a funeral. I associate the sight, smell, and that Easter-ish time of year, with my aunt.

As a child and a young adult, I felt seen by Trish. Born earlier than most of my cousins on my mother’s side (and first on my father’s side), I was somewhat lost between all the grown ups and the large batch of cousins that came after me. Trisha saw me. She’d stick up for me if her husband, my mother’s brother asked me leading questions around my mother going back to University, when Irish culture was still pretty sexist. How did I feel about her going back to University, when there were 18 years olds competing to get in to the same Institution, Gerard would ask, and from the far side of their large living room, Trish, crouched beside a low table, polishing the stereo system would interject: “ You don’t have to answer that, you know, Catriona. You can tell him to ‘Eff OFF, you know !”!!

I assumed at the time that hers was a stance of sisterly-support, of solidarity with my mother and myself for being so ‘modern’ and ‘liberated’, of feminism. But now I wonder whether she inadvertently shut down a line of enquiry from her husband that could have helped me to realise sooner that my mother was always going to end up centre stage. Maybe I had feelings about her being so busy studying, while I, the eldest, took on more responsibilities… because my father had remained living in continental Europe…

It makes sense now, because one day, some time later, standing in my mother’s driveway, my uncle Gerard asked me “Do you want to be taking care of your baby sister for the rest of your life, Catriona?”. Jolted awake, as it were, I replied that no, no I didn’t. He was the one who planted the idea that I take a year off before college (Gap years weren’t yet really a thing back then). That I leave Ireland and go back to Paris where I’d grown up, somewhere I had roots, friends.… I did do that, and in hindsight, it broke a sort of spell, or a script I’d been blindly following, sacrificing my own dreams for my siblings.…

Interesting what can unfold when you unpack the memories associated with a flower… scents, images and feelings…

Poppies remind me of my husband, Bob, because he loves them. One of the reasons he loves living where we live now is that we get to enjoy fields filled with poppies in the spring… And they remind us of our beloved friend Candy, a painter of poppies. Below is a painting I commissioned from Candy for Bob’s 60th birthday, over 20 years ago, and a few of the poppies we see every day on our walks around here this time of year:

I associate Blue Irises with Bob too. And since we moved to Cataluña, Yellow Hibiscus….

I wonder if he associates nasturtiums, and all kinds of geraniums, dark red hanging ones, and especially wild purple ones, with me… Also lavender…?

Peace Roses remind us of each other… We’ve always planted them, whatever continent or country we’re living in…

Bob used to grow Dahlias… all sizes, all the colours of the rainbow… So many that when we had an abundance of them in our garden, would give one to each of the women in my support group at the end of their therapy session…

Bougainvillea and Jasmine are blooming like mad in my garden right now. The Calla Lillies have just finished, and they remind me of my friend Clare who lived next door to us in Seattle and moved to California years ago.. My mind still associates them with the hot tub we sat in, enjoying her lovely garden that had more Calla Lilies than Freda Kahlo and Diego Rivera had ever painted…

So… take a trip down your own memory lane… What flower memories do you have?

Main – Photo by Polash Senapoti