Thankful November 2012: Day 18

Today I am grateful for nearly dead flowers. Last week when we arrived back from my parents' house I knew that our elevator was broken which meant we were toting everything from the car up three flights of stairs. And when I say we, that's me and a six-year-old. Sigh.

She was awesome enough to carry one bag and I put my messenger bag across my chest, computer bag on my back, a tote bag over my shoulder and picked up a very large basket of freshly laundered clothes and started the trek that would take us out the parking garage across the yard, up the sidewalk, up the stairs to the front door of the building, across the courtyard and up two more flights of stairs.

When we got to the stairs at the front door, loaded down, The Bug had to stop and pick some flowers. She delivered two very full roses to me as a gift, on their last legs with petals about to fall off. She dropped them on top of the overloaded basket I was carrying and honestly they were falling all over and were quite a pain to get upstairs in one piece along with everything else I was carrying on.

But they made it upstairs miraculously. She immediately went and found a vase, filled it with water and placed the flowers on a table in the living room. (I was impressed, she's never done this before). The next morning it became obvious that one of the stems was not actually in the water. Within another day the other flower was shriveled and dead. I have to say I loved them even more at that point.

I was so glad I was careful with them and got them upstairs. How thankful I was that she was so thoughtful and picked those roses for me and took such care to put them in a vase and leave them somewhere close to my workspace where I would see them regularly. I left them there days beyond their passing and let all the petals fall off on the table. Each petal drop was a reminder of her tender love and care. Mmmm, thankful for those flowers and all they mean.