Love Blooms With Power Of Flowers

By B.G. Kelley
Posted: March 03, 2001

'There's power in flowers," my pop the florist forever preached.

Flowers were a gift like other natural gifts - a full moon, the mountains, rainbows and sunsets. Flowers, he would remind me, are a steady force, softening even the toughest among us. Even roofers send their hearts in a vase. But most of all, my pop told me, flowers speak to the verities of the heart and soul: Honor, truth, love.

God, he was right.

One day long ago, as I was working side by side with him in his tiny flower shop in the Paradise section of the city, I was telling him I had taken out a French major at Temple, but there wasn't enough spark to turn on a pocket flashlight.

An incurable romantic and a sucker for a good love story - he was Irish - my pop walked over to his desk, pulled a couple of hard-to-come-by tickets to the Philadelphia Flower Show from a stack that he kept for his best customers, handed them to me and said, "Take her here."

"I was thinking more in terms of a fancy French restaurant," I replied.

"I'm still your father. Take her here."

So I did. And I couldn't tear her away from the sprawl of rose displays. To say the least, she was impressed, drinking in the Flower Show in passionate gulps. My world was rocking. I got a glimpse of the power of flowers.

Whenever I go to the Flower Show these days, I see my pop's reflection in the roses. I'm lucky: I will always be blessed with a usable past.

But most of all, for the last 29 years I have seen the power of flowers every day in my home. Remember that French major my father told me to take to the Flower Show? Well, I married her.

And on our wedding day she carried a bouquet of roses in her arms as she walked down the aisle.

Twenty-five American beauties.

Arranged by my pop.

B.G. Kelley writes frequently for the Commentary Page.

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