Ridin', Reinin' and Writin'

Today is Valentine’s Day, a day of chocolate, cinnamon hearts, heart-shaped cookies, candy and cards . . . and roses. Several years ago, on Valentine’s Day, my husband brought me twelve long-stemmed red roses. There had not been many times in my life when I had received flowers. I was flattered, but it didn’t have to be a dozen. One would have meant just as much.

I will never forget a scenario I watched unfold in Seattle airport a number of years ago as my husband and I waited on the benches for our flight. We were a little bored as one gets in airports. Don read a little, then almost fell asleep. I people-watched.

One young man captured my attention and, as I so often do, I began to speculate on the story behind the man. He wore faded jeans with frayed, worn holes at the knees, a sleeveless T-shirt exposing tatooed arms, and a bandana tied around his head. He was nervous. He couldn’t stay in one place long. He fidgeted. He paced. He sat down. He got up again. But that was not what made me notice him. It was the rose. In his hand, he gently held one long-stemmed red rose.

The incongruity of the picture struck me first. From his dress, I would have guessed him to be a cocky, devil-may-care young man, but his demeanor said otherwise. And he was obviously waiting for someone special to get off the next flight. The rose changed positions as he did. Sometimes he carried it close to his heart, sometimes loosely in his hand like he didn’t know what to do with it, but the scene that stays with me is when he stopped pacing and stood, back to the wall facing the gate. He brought his left leg up and placed it on the wall behind him as if to steady himself and placed the rose beside his right cheek. He was still for a moment, very much in his own world. And that world included someone very special to him. Now I was waiting for whoever was going to get off that plane too!

As the passengers filed through the arrival gate, the young man shifted his pose and became even more anxious. Finally, a pretty young girl with an older man (her father?), came toward him. Still shy, he gave her the rose but they didn’t hug or kiss. They exchanged a few words and the three walked off, leaving me touched in a way I couldn’t quite explain. I turned to my husband. "Did you see that?" I asked.

"What?" he replied. He had missed the whole thing, but I have a permanent, perfect photograph in my brain . . . of a young man in a bandana leaning on the wall, one foot back, holding a rose to his cheek. My photo, if I had been able to take one, would have been in black and white except for the rose, which would have been the deepest, richest red.

I thought then of a time when a man met me at the bus depot with one red rose. Our relationship was teetering on the edge of a demise and I had agreed to visit him on my birthday in February so we could discuss our future if we had one. I arrived rumpled, tired and very glad to be off the bus, but as I walked into the depot, my heart lifted, for there, galloping across the floor toward me was my boyfriend with one…red…rose! He, unlike the young man in the airport, was not at all anxious or concerned about everyone watching for, at 6’6”, no one could miss his dash across the depot! Charmed? Yes, I was.

A dozen red roses? Very good, but one perfect rose can make an even greater impression. Of course I’m speaking for myself. Happy Valentine’s Day!

PS I once received a dozen red roses for training a rather difficult Appaloosa gelding. I earned every one of those!