The rose bush grew off the corner of our front porch. As far as I knew the bush had always been there. I certainly have no memory of my parents planting it. It was likely there when my parents bought the house. Unlike the small reddish roses in the back yard, this bush grew giant roses. I had to cup both of my small hands together to hold just one of the pink and yellow blooms. I loved those roses. I loved the non-standard color of them. Our yard was not the pretty one on the block. With seven kids to tend, there was not much energy left to make the yard attractive. But when the roses were in bloom, we had beauty. I loved the roses even more when I learned that they were called Peace Roses. The variety had been smuggled out of France just prior to the German invasion during World War II. This was the rose that was given to all the delegations of the newly formed United Nations. This beauty had history attached.
When the passage of time and events brought me to plan my wedding, I was not a person who had clear ideas of what I wanted. I knew that I wanted things to be pretty, but I had very little idea how to arrange that. I was also very focused on not spending too much money. My wedding dress, sewn by my aunt, cost less than most girls spend on their first prom dress. But when my mother asked what flowers I wanted for my bouquet, I already knew the answer. I wanted Peace Roses. In fact Peace Roses were the only uniting theme of the wedding. I didn’t have bridesmaids or mandatory color matching. The decorations were minimal, but there were matching floral arrangements on the tables, cake, and my bouquet. In the end the flowers were silk roses. Silk roses were simpler to arrange. We bought them months in advance rather than having to arrange a wedding day floral delivery. But we did find silk roses with the Peace Rose colors. And I was happy.
I look back on my wedding and realize that if I were to arrange the wedding now, there are many things I would do differently. At the time I dumped most of it onto my mother because I did not much care about details so long as I had Howard. I suspect that this looking back and re-evaluating is common and that it is possibly the source of much wedding stress as mothers try to do better for their children than they did for themselves. The thing I have come to realize is that yes I would do it differently if I had to do it now. Of course I would. I am a different person now than I was then. I have far more experience planning and arranging large events. I’ve had 16 years of refining my opinions about the things I like and do not like. At the age of twenty I was much less certain of myself than I am now. But the fact that I would now plan things differently does not mean that I need to make any attempt to “fix” that wedding. It was just fine. It was perfect for who I was at that point in my life. The fact that it would not be perfect today just means that I have changed, not that the wedding was wrong.
So if I had to do it now, what would I change? There are myriads of small things, but the one that looms largest is that I would have real cut flowers. Real flowers have textures and scents in ways that silk flowers never can. But see, I was not a gardener at the age of twenty and so this did not matter so much. I just picked the only flower with which I’d had close personal acquaintance. Now I’m very familiar with an array of beautiful blooms. I love so many flowers that I would be hard pressed to pick only one. I doubt that I would pick roses. As a gardener I am not a lover of rose bushes. This house had two dozen of them when I moved in and they are suffering slow attrition as they die or I dig them up to plant things which will not attack me. No, I would not pick roses.
But then I found this photo of a Peace Rose on my internet reading list. It was taken by Provophoto, whose photo-a-day journal continually amazes and interests me with the beautiful images he captures. I saw that Peace Rose and was transported back to being a young girl on my parent’s porch with the bush of giant blooms in front of me. The photo reminded me of the one rose bush that I loved. It is almost enough to make me want to plant a Peace Rose bush in my garden so that I can once again hold a double handful of bloom and bury my nose in the memories. So I guess for all the changes in my life and preferences, some things stay the same. These threads come from my past and extend into my future and allow me to still be me no matter what else may shift. And so now I love Peace Roses even more, because for me they are symbolic of continuity as well as peace, and beauty, and childhood