red-roses-1

Once upon a time, a young woman received a red rose from her loved one and, in the heat of the romance, vowed to keep the symbol of their undying love forever and dry the rose in one of her favorite poetry books.  She checked on the rose every few days to make sure that it still kept its shape, remembering the details of the day and imaging how she will open the book when she is old and happily married and call onto her husband who will join her in the memory with fondness that will be spoken of for generations to come.

… Or so she thought.

How many times was the promise of undying love proven to be a temporary feeling and a spur of the moment decision?  How many times has “forever” turned to something closer to a year or so, and how often have, “my heart will only beat for you,” turn to mere words spoken and soon forgotten.  Ah the many lovers who vowed and sworn and so easily checked out of love hotel and how many realized that the hotel is a small bed and breakfast?

Roses, and flowers in general, hold great meaning within their petals and are thus used widely by lovers all around the world.  Those of you who were successful in drying a flower realize that it has stood despite the harshness of life and remains powerful with its beauty.  Even though many relationships don’t work out, the importance of that single dry rose defeats time and turns that previous love immortal.

So with the social networking craze that enabled people to find out what their ex’s are up to, many long forgotten dried up flowers suddenly emerged and many old hideous pictures were tagged.  If a person is alive, you can eventually find out what they’re up to whether by searching the images in news (especially if you are living in a closed community like we are,) or by finding a friend of a friend of a friend who happens to have an open profile and a few pictures close to the location of your ex’s home.  You get my point.  We all searched for our ex’s and we all managed to find a loophole in their privacy even though we are not hackers.

Now, when a wife, who is not really happy with her life choices when it comes to the person she chose to marry, looks at the empty screen of her laptop after a great fight and recalls one of her ex’s, she may hear the siren’s song to take a leap into the dark end of the internet, to dance with the social media, and to search for her ex.  And what could she find?

Everything:

Her ex is a successful entrepreneur, a happily married father with a wife who is, in a word, stunning, yearly vacations, and the one-too-sweet picture of him in his mother’s 80th birthday surrounded by perfection.  Of course, in comparison to the S#it hole the stalker (well, what else would you call her?) is living, she is in hell envious of the heaven she sees.  And to make matters worse, the ex is a chocolatier.

Why oh why didn’t I marry the chocolatier.  Yes, a person who makes CHOCOLATE for a living!  A person who probably takes the small pieces of chocolate home to his wife because she loves chocolate.  Well, we all love chocolate!  Why don’t we get some?  A real Willy Wonka without the craziness.  A chocolatier!

If we only knew where life would take us, that woman would probably stick with the chocolatier knowing that the little things that she hated about him when she dumped him are the least of her concerns.  Does it really matter that he has a uni-brow?  HE MAKES CHOCOLATE for a living!!

Well, the simple minded game of, “if I married X, I would be ….” can by played with no guarantees as to the happiness levels afterwards because regrets and decisions make us who we are today.

And the rose I found in my poetry book?  I couldn’t for the life of me remember who it’s from.  I might have even bought it myself to see if I could dry flowers.  This really sounds more like me.

So, the next time you receive a flower and choose to keep it for the future, write a note explaining who it’s from, the date you got it, and what was going on that day.  Consider it a message in the bottle, but enclose enough information to remind yourself of the day.  You will have so many things on your mind later in life that you will not remember anything.  It is not a movie you watch in an hour or two, this is a lifetime of memories and events.  Do not expect to remember everything.

Lesson 1: when drying flowers, make sure to write a note with information

Lesson 2: if your current boyfriend’s family own a chocolate shop, stick with him; he will probably become a chocolatier.