Rose
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

We were partners in business, David and I, and flower production was a tough business. Every time that you buy a flower give a thought to where it came from. There is beauty, and fragrance, and delicate textures, and colors that can brighten a day, but they are not easy to grow, and to transport and keep fresh, and distribute to so many wholesalers or individual florists, and get paid for without some dispute as to price or quality.

We were both married at the time, and we had the pressures of responsibility for wives and families. We knew one another well, and we rarely disagreed, but we mainly worked apart. Dave looked after production and I looked after distribution and invoicing, and we trusted one another’s ability in the tasks that we did.

Perhaps we should have been closer, especially as we both lost our wives after many years of marriage. We gave each other sympathy rather than support, and we each carried the burden of the business alone to allow for other’s grief to heal. We never had a chance to share much in the way of feelings, and certainly not secrets. Perhaps we were just good at burying such things? I was, in any case.

I had always nursed the idea of becoming a woman. It was deep in my psyche and yet with the business, the marriage, and the family, I was able to put aside such thoughts as if they were a childhood fantasy. It was just that when my wife died and my children set up their own homes, it all came flooding back once I was alone.

She had a name by then. I called the woman in the mirror Rose. She was not attractive when I first gave her a name, but there was something to work on. I had the good fortune to have kept my hair, with only a couple of spots where a surgeon could pull the scalp forward to create a feminine hairline. It was just that it all seemed too late to do anything like that. But nobody was watching but me, and with every little step I realized that I might be able to realize that feminine dream.

Dave started to notice things when we met. I felt that I had to tell him, and I also told him that he was the first to know. He was surprised at first, but then he was fascinated. He asked me to come into one of the giants greenhouses where the pink roses grew, and as we walked through the heady floral perfumed air he picked up a bud that had fallen and dusted the moist soil from it.

“This has broken from the stem, but if you stay rooted, and with the attention of a good gardener, I am certain that you will bloom into the perfect rose,” he said.

It seemed to me that he was the first person to see me as a woman, even though I was barely trying at that time. His message was that he was ready to offer me the same kind of attention to see me blossom into the Rose I wanted to be. He never looked at me in any other way after that, from bud to full bloom, I was his prize flower.

I am no fresh flower, but for him I have done my best. As I stand to exchange vows with the man I have fallen madly in love with, I give thanks to heaven that I am finally me at last. Rose.

The End
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© Maryanne Peters 2025