Smells Like Spring

On a little traffic island that I pass on the way to and from my play job with Konstantinos, there is always a young guy selling flowers. They are arranged in bunches of the same type of flower and stored in plastic buckets. These are some of the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen. There are daffodils, Gerber daisies, tulips, lilies, pretty much any flower you could want, and they are all absolutely vibrant. I can’t imagine more colorful flowers. I love the way they sell flowers in Greece. You don’t have to go to a florist. You don’t have to get some crazy arrangement complete with weird green stuff that you don’t really want. You can get flowers that look like you just cut them from your own yard. And you hardly pay a thing for them. It’s wonderful. Today was especially nice because when I walked past the buckets of flowers, there were lilacs. It was beginning to rain, and the scent of them was especially strong. I love the smell of lilacs. It reminds me of my backyard at Easter time and playing around the big green electric box. (Do you think they really mean it when they say to keep away from that thing? We always used it as a base, and nothing bad ever happened to any of us….Unless that has something to do with why we’re all a little weird.) I stopped a few paces past the flower seller and thought about buying some, but I didn’t. I kicked myself the whole way home after that. I don’t know why I didn’t. Flowers here aren’t expensive. They’re gorgeous. And they can transform a room. On Saturday, when I am walking home from Konstantinos’, I’m going to buy a bunch. I just don’t know what kind yet. Maybe I’ll start buying them every week. A different kind every week. I always said that “when I grew up,” I’d have flowers in my house all the time. Seems now is as good a time as any to start admitting that I’m getting close to being grown up.