The Dahlias Mom Grew by Feel

The fair

The fairgrounds were already hot and loud at seven Wednesday morning, with kids washing steers at the wash racks. Andy carried the jars into the floral building two at a time.

Rosemary met us at the door with her clipboard and entry tags.

She looked at Mom for a long moment, and then down at the jars, and then she put her arms around Mom right there in the doorway.

“Arla Petersen,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d see you this year.”

“Neither did I,” Mom said.

Judging happened at ten. Exhibitors are not allowed in the building while the judge works, so Mom and I sat outside on a bench under the big cottonwood across from the hog barn, with lemonade from the Methodist stand, and waited.

People kept coming by, women Mom had known for forty years from church and Farm Bureau. They had all heard. They were glad to see her out.

At a quarter to twelve Rosemary came out of the floral building and walked across the grass toward us. She was not hurrying. She had something in her hand, and it was purple.

She knelt down in front of the bench so Mom could hear her plain.

“Arla, you have twenty-two blue ribbons in there. And the judge gave the Best of Show to your Duet. I’m bringing you the purple myself, because I didn’t want anybody else to.”

Mom took that rosette in both hands. She ran her thumb all around the ruffled edge and down the long ribbon tails, and her face crumpled for just a second.

Then she laughed. She laughed so loud people at the lemonade stand turned around.

“Verlyn’s flower,” she said. “That was always his favorite. He’d have been so pleased.”

I looked up just then and saw Shelly. She was standing alone at the end of the hog barn, maybe forty yards away, in the shade.

She had been watching. When she saw me see her, she turned around and walked off toward the parking lot.

I did not go after her. I wanted to, and I did not. Some things have to come on their own, or they do not come at all.

I just held Mom’s hand while she held her purple ribbon, and I let Shelly go.

The sixth seedling

The sixth seedling at the end of the bed bloomed the last week of August.

I was out there alone in the evening when I saw it, and I went and got Mom, and I walked her down the rope to it.

It was a medium bloom, about four inches across, a soft coral pink with a deep red streak through the middle of every petal, like somebody had drawn on it with a pencil.

It was nothing like either of its parents. It was its own flower.

Mom held it in both hands for a long time. She asked me to tell her the color three different ways.

Then she said, “Don’t put a tag on that one yet. I know what I’m calling it. I’ll tell you when it’s time.”

I asked her what. She would not say. She just smiled and patted my cheek.