“Do you mind not destroying the roses?” The old man grumpily scolded me as I was hunched over a rose bush trying to take a few decent shots.
“If I destroyed them now, what would I photograph next time?” I replied in a light-hearted tone and gave him a friendly smile as I turned to face him.
The sight of my camera instantly put him at ease. Clearly I wasn’t there to do the flowers any harm.
“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” He beamed, his tone soft and his face radiant.
After adding a few more praises and some disgruntled comments about selfish, careless people ruining the plants when picking the flowers, he returned to his bench and continued admiring the colourful roses surrounding us. I may not have shared his views entirely – I found nothing wrong with children picking the occasional rose. The plants are fine and they delight all of us for several months every year.
To his eye, I was one of the “evil” rose thieves… until he saw the camera and I suddenly became an admirer, just like him. He was right. And he was wrong. Both at the exact same time, I amused myself thinking on the way back home, as several rose thieving incidents came to mind, together with my considerations on perspective.
One of my mother’s fondest stories about my father is that of him showing up with a car trunk full of roses in the early hours of warm summer mornings – stolen roses, mind you, a fact which amused her terribly. The way she tells it, you would think it happened countless times. In fact, it only happened once or twice. Driving home after a night out with the boys, he stole the roses to pre-empt any potential arguments. At that time, no flower shop was open at such an hour. And the truth is, he could afford buying her the roses, but he never would have; he was simply too… frugal. Nevertheless, in her book, it was a special gesture proving how much he loved her for the time they were together. By his own admission, that was one of his summer go-to moves with the ladies – no matter who they were – guaranteed to make an impression.
Again, quite a difference in perspective…
Meanwhile, I may only photograph roses now, but I used to steal quite a few of them many moons ago, when I was in high school. Different time, different place, but like I said, the old man was also right. He was, however, wrong about the motives. I used to steal them back then in part for the same reason why I shoot them now, and for the same reason he protects them. I loved them… even if it was in a more selfish, devoid of means fashion, typical to any teenager.
The Botanical Garden in my birth town was one of our favourite hangout spots when the weather was good. We knew how to get in without paying for a ticket and how to get out late in the night, hours after closing time. The one or two guards couldn’t keep up with all the teenagers sneaking in and out of that vast space, and I don’t think they even tried. Those early summer nights, after the other visitors left, I would point at my favourite roses and my boyfriend would pick them for me and carefully hide them in his backpack. It was only a few flowers at a time, to cheer up my desk. When they withered, we picked a few more to replace them, and so on. With one exception… my grandmother’s birthday.
To be continued….
Ana Linden 