My Way | A Confession About Stealing Peonies

It wasn’t lilacs, but peonies . . my very favorite cut flowers … that presented me with my first ethical dilemma in life.  Looking at Darwin’s photo below, reminds me of an old man who taught me a big life lesson.

via Vol-au-Vent at FlickrA Budding Beauty 

It was a warm and lovely spring Saturday in my tiny town. I was scheduled to go to confession at 4pm; my long, straight hair was freshly washed and  bound in curlers. And yes, I admit this to you … at eight years old, I had lust in my heart … for Mr. Gilling’s peonies.

Mr. Gilling was a lonely, difficult man whose garden bordered ours in the back. We never saw him. If he appeared at all … it was to yell at one of us neighborhood kids.

Even then, I was a pragmatist and a straight shooter. I could have crept under the windows of Mr. Gillilng’s house in darkness, holding my garden shears … snatching those gorgeous peonies for myself.

This is not my style, however. So I marched my curlered locks to Mr. Gilling’s back door, knocking, knocking with one hand, holding garden shears in the other.

Ask and You Shall Receive 

“Mr. Gilling,” I said, when he appeared. “How are you today? Lovely afternoon, don’t you think?”

He glowered at me, with that … “what do you want, kid” look on his face. 

I was brought up very well and always respectful of adults, so I really did speak this way: “Mr. Gilling, sir, could I please, please have some of your peonies? They are so beautiful and I want them. You don’t see them, because you are never outside. Please, could I have just a few.”

“No.”

That was it. He said “no”, and slammed the door in my face, leaving me crushed, dejected, and on the verge of tears. He was soooo mean!!! I remember wondering how anyone could be so lacking in joy in his life. I felt badly for him, but my focus was on my selfish lust for these gorgeous peonies, that would die in a few days, with no one to admire them.

Drying Peonies

skblanks at FlickrHatching My Plot 

Head bowed,  I walked back to my own house, in a real peony funk. Sitting in my sandbox, surrounded by my Saturday-baked mud pies, decorated with sunny but wilted dandelions, I considered the unfairness of my situation … and the fact that I was headed to confession anyway. Why not add another sin … a real sin … to my offering. Let me do some earned penance, for once.

I, the nearly perfect child who never wanted to be on anyone’s bad side … I, Miss Goody-Goody Two Shoes, conceived my plan.

Assuming that Mr. Gilling was sitting by his window, I took off down the alley between our properties, shears in hand. Walking up as far as my grandmother’s house, I said hello to her gorgeous lilac bush.

Why couldn’t Mr. Gilling be more like my grandmother Marie, who gave me copious branches of lilacs. She would have deflowered the entire tree for me. In retrospect, I should have asked her to call the grumpy, old man … but this is hindsight and a reflection of my decades-later maturity.

The transformation occured now.

Turning my attention on the route to the peony bushes, I became a common thief. Slinking towards my goal, I stayed out of Mr. Gilling’s sight line, walking close to the houses. When I reached his property, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled to the peony bushes.

I was deliriously happy, burying my angelic but suddenly wicked face into the blooms, inhaling their essence. The sensations consume me even now.

via Flickr’s Raised in CottonThere was a moment of rationalization, as I raised the shears to the peony blooms. “It’s not fair,” I told myself. “I asked him properly, and he is a mean, miserable man to deny me this simple pleasure.”

Cut. cut. cut. I tried to take strategic stems … just a few … so he would never miss them. Cut. cut. cut. Just a few more. They were so exotically, erotically, overwhelmingly gorgeous!!!

Darkness and Foreboding 

Suddenly, I felt his shadow over me. Oh no!

Alright, I would take it like a man. Getting up from my hands and knees, I tilted my young head high, looking him straight in the eye. Yes, I suppose that I was defiant, and definitely not pleading for mercy.

“Give them to me, young lady. Now you are not only rude but a common thief.”

“Please, Mr. Gilling, please let me have them. They give you no pleasure”

He grabbed them out of my hands, leaving me with a strong desire to clip him with my shears.  Thankfully, I restrained myself.

“Go home now, I’m calling your mother.”

Teary-eyed and dejected, I walked back to the brouhaha waiting for me at home. There was no doubt it would be big one … a five-star spectacle. Walking through the breezeway, I heard my mother on the phone, so I waited for the fireworks to begin.

Yes, she was furious, but those parts of my life are private. And it is a glorious day in New York, and I would only write this little tale of childhood immorality, if it didn’t have a happy ending.

Bleeding Hearts 

Yes, I got a whopper of a spanking. And yes, I had to say about 100 Hail Marys … so many that the other folks at St. Genevieve’s Catholic Church wondered what the heck I had done. BUT, guess what! I ALSO got the peonies.

Yes, indeed … Mr. Gilling was so impacted by the punishment I was willing to endure for those peonies, that when I returned from confession, he called our house, telling me to come and get the flowers.

This was not my first experience getting what I wanted from men, and it would not be my last. 

Love and Gratitude 

Knocking on Mr. Gilling’s door, then thanking him profusely with genuine gratitude for his change of heart, I allowed him to cut a few more peonies for me, and I carried the entire bouquet home in triumph.

To this day, when the first lilacs appear in the spring, I think of my darling grandmother and Mr. Gilling’s peonies … and Mr. Gilling, too. It was probably he who confirmed my tendency to stick to my guns, never taking “no” as the final answer.

Even then, I was a tough little cookie.

Unlike Mr. Gilling, I will give you all the peonies I have … all 30, 601 Flickr peonies in the biggest peony show ever sent over the Internet.  I hold back nothing. Just stop when you’ve had enough. I have no idea how long it will run … .perhaps weeks and with no water. Mandana starts us off with my very favorite type of peony, but they are all so beautiful … I adore them all.

As for me, I’m admiring my lilacs and checking my Blackberry for a date next week to visit Darwin at the New York Botanical Gardens.  Strangely, I feel cleansed somehow.

The New York Botanical Garen is replicating many of Charles Darwin’s experiments in what the New York Times calls a “stunning, multipart exhibition called Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure.”  

The exhibit pays particular attention to Darwin’s  theories about the “behavior” of plants — how they move, respond to light, consume insects and otherwise act in the world. This field of research is called Plant Neurobiology.

Love,
Anne