Fragile Rose Season

It's no coincidence that Alberta is called Wild Rose Country. There is nothing sweeter than riding down gravel roads with the windows wide open and the perfume of hundreds of wild roses kissing you as you go by.

Tradition has it that dearest one brings me the very first wild rose he sees. I don't know when this started but long enough ago that I can't remember a June when he hasn't. This man has pulled off the highway in his big truck (18 wheeler) to hand deliver that rose. He is a romantic at heart.

One June during rose season I had been feeling pissy towards him all day. Can't remember the reason.(do we ever?) But as I went to meet him at the highway and he was walking towards me with his hand behind his back I knew he held a fragile blossom in the palm of his hand. Still pissy with him later I was telling all this to a very dear friend. The kind who said to me, "You asshole. I could smack you up the side of the head. Go give that man a hug." I've learned since to let go of pissy feelings if they coincide with rose season. Lots of things in life are fragile and time is too short to forget that.

Rose season has come early this year. Last night dearest one came in from mowing the lawn with something cupped in his hand. I wasn't even thinking roses. After all the May long weekend has just passed. June is still a week away, wild roses normally another 10 days after that. Dearest one tried to surprise me and make me smell them but I was sure he had a worm, caterpillar or bug of some kind in his hand and was trying to scare me. After screeching and trying to keep his hand away from my face three times in a row he finally opened his palm to show me two wild rose buds. Duh. Wrecked romantic moment courtesy his very own Hope.

Dearest one is a die hard romantic even though he is in near constant pain (as he is these days). The man is a saint. He's feeling fragile, his health issues hanging in the balance. We hope they turn out to be something easily fixable, a blip on the radar screen we call our journey. But as I hugged him last night I couldn't help but pray that this year's rose buds, now drying on my open bible on the little altar in my livingroom, are not the last ones he ever picks for me.