“Third
try for a new world record” I gasp pacing in front of the orange rosebush. My spindly five-year-old legs had just failed
twice at emulating the long strides, flying leap, and two foot landing of the
long jump which I had seen in the 1964 summer Olympics.
The
roses are at the end of their flowering season in my mother’s yard of
shrubs. First out in spring are roses-of-Sharon
which she calls “rosasharn” in her eastern
The
last flowers out in the fall are chrysanthemums which have their own distinct
pleasures. Pinching a tight green ball
of a bud between thumb and finger unfurls a tiny burst of crimson or orange. The survivors become soft knobs emitting the
bittersweet smell of Indian summer.
In between
the rosaharns and mums come the real roses. Their tapered buds hide deep colors revealed
as burgundy, white or flame by unpeeling the green outer petals. Mom doesn’t trim the bushes so their tendrils
arch outward hanging with fragrant bunches which call in the Japanese beetles. Karla shows me how to kill them by pinching the
brown and green shells but I prefer to gather a handful of the scratching bugs
and launch them up into the air. We pop
petals by placing one over a circle made by thumb and index finger and then
slapping it with the other palm. But my
favorite flower game is leap rose to the chagrin of the gardener.
Two
crows fly up from the roof as I speed toward the bush and leap, knocking off
remnant petals and losing a PF Flyer to the thorns before tumbling down. “Way to go, Alan Beatty” cheers Aunt Ruth
who’s walking up the driveway, incorrectly deducing I was pretending to be my
big brother the high school quarterback.
Perplexed but proud, I follow her into the house.
