Romancey Pants

Friends, I’ve always loved roses. Well, I say always. Once, when I was only just old enough to drag a child’s stool into the garden, I placed it next to the flower bed and climbed up to look down into my mother’s roses. My goal? To place a small, sparkly bouncing ball into the center of those big, voluptuous petals. I thought it would look pretty there.

What happened? Li’l Goober here toppled right into those rose bushes then, once my mother had retrieved me, howled myself blue while she pulled rose thorns out of my arms and legs with a pair of tweezers.

But fast forward to the Nineties when I was at university in the Southwest of England, a place renowned for its rich folklore. There, I learned something new about roses. I did actually study Folklore at university, but I learned the following in an Elizabethan Fiction class. The young rose with its tight coils of petals often represented the female sex. And doesn’t that add a little extra pizazz to Shakespeare’s “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”?

Romeo, you’re steaming!

Later, in Folklore classes, I learned a little more about Elizabethan flowers. If you really hated someone, you could send them a bouquet of white roses so they’d know you wished illness upon them. Ugh! I can’t see them tending to those poor flowers very carefully! Fortunately, white roses weren’t everything. Yellow roses, for instance, were symbolic of friendship, so receiving a bouquet of those wasn’t a problem. Unless you were all “Oh gosh, I really don’t want to be friends with them. They literally quote Dante every ten seconds and I once heard them tell a dreadful homophobic horse joke.”

Fascinating as all this flower folklore was to learn, for me, roses will always symbolize love. Self-love, included, which is why I’ve been known to buy myself red roses. When I look into the swirling petals of a fresh rose, I can’t imagine anything but love. Yes, of course, there are the thorns, but love can always use some protection.

What’s more, I love an old, wilting rose, its petals lethargically shedding, its coils loosening as it lazily unfurls. And I think that’s beautifully anti-ageist. Because young roses and old roses can all be gorgeous. And there’s something intersectional about that…

I wish you red roses always, my friends. Unless you can’t stand them, in which case I’ll wish chocolate or hummingbirds or those really amazing donuts with the custard filling.

Or maybe just love. That’ll do.