Mother’s Day Apology
On Mother’s Day, when I was six-years-old,
I made my mother the loveliest bouquet.
Fetching grown-up scissors from the junk drawer next to the fridge,
I snuck away to the neighbor’s house
while my mother put my baby sister down for a nap.
Carefully, oh so carefully, I cut every flower from the neighbor’s flower bed.
Armed with a bouquet so large I could barely see above it,
I made my way back home to our front door.
There, I knocked with my foot, having no free hand to turn the knob.
The horrified look on my mother’s face,
as she recognized the neighbor’s flowers
severed from their cultivated bed and carried lovingly in my arms,
was my first indication that my gift was not going to be well received.
As my lower lip trembled and my eyes pooled with tears,
my mother explained that those flowers were for looking
not for cutting
and not for taking without asking.
She arranged the stolen blooms carefully in her best cut-glass vase
which she carried with both hands to the neighbor’s door.
I lagged behind her…
dreading the apology my mother practiced with me
in the safety of our yellow kitchen.
Since my hands were now free,
I was the one to ring the doorbell, standing on my tiptoes to reach it.
“I’m so so sorry I cut your flowers without asking,”
I said
as soon as our neighbor opened the door.
No doubt, she was surprised to see my mother
standing behind me, familiar flowers in an unfamiliar vase.
“They were for me…for Mother’s Day,”
my mother explained.
“We truly are so very sorry.”
I do not remember what the neighbor said
just my mother,
as nervous as I was,
standing behind me
returning her gift,
then taking my hand in hers as we walked back home together.