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Stuff It with FlowersMarch 16, 2006 My niece, Rozzie, opens in a play tomorrow. She's almost 12. The play is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I figured I'd sent flowers for opening night, one theater girl to another. Fortunately I mentioned my notion to my sister, Roz's mother: she advised that it would be better to have the flowers sent to the house rather than the school because there might not be anyone there to receive them. This would not have occurred to me on Martha's Vineyard, where flowers go with opening night like -- ladders and falls? old pickups and rejection stickers? (No, I haven't taken Uhura Mazda to be inspected yet. She needs a bath and a vacuuming before I'll even make an appointment.) So yesterday I stopped by the local florist on the way home from the barn. I don't know enough about flowers to choose varieties. Instead, thinking of Joseph's dreamcoat and Rozzie's personality, I just specified "bright." Lady asked me what I wanted to spend. I said "25, 30 dollars," my usual. She said the florist on the other end might not do it for that and suggested $35. Hoo-kay. With tax and delivery charge and whatever, the figure I signed off on was more like $44. After a detour to the grocery store, I got home to discover a message on my machine: the florist shop reported that they couldn't do what I wanted for less than $51 and change. I thought of all the other things I could get Roz for $51 (her birthday's in early April) and called the shop to cancel the order. Shop was closed. No answering machine. Called back this morning. Lady noted it was $7 more than the original order; I countered that the original was already $14 more than I wanted to pay. Order was successfully cancelled. I called my sister to ask her to recommend a florist in her area. She did. I got to thinking. Last fall I copyedited a huge and wonderful collection of letters by Jessica Mitford, aka Decca. Her first foray into book-length journalism, The American Way of Death, turned the U.S. funeral industry upside down in the early 1960s. A major battle was fought over the apparently innocuous phrase "Please omit flowers": for a while, the funeral industry managed to strong-arm many newspapers into not accepting funeral notices that contained "Please omit." This practice, along with quite a few other industry excesses, did not survive sustained exposure to the light of day. Suggesting contributions to a particular charity "in lieu of flowers" has been pretty standard since I started paying attention, probably in the late 1960s or early '70s. The funeral industry seems to have survived, despite this and subsequent challenges. Not that I have anything against flowers, mind you. True, if someone wants to remember me on a special occasion, I'd rather receive, say, a few packets of McVitie's Digestives or maybe some crystallized ginger. (Rhodry suggests dog cookies -- the cheap ones from Reliable Market are fine with him.) But the idea of spending $51 for something that's going to wither and turn gelatinous in a few days sticks in my craw, and so does the underlying assumption that if you don't shift into "price is no object" mode where flowers and certain other rituals are concerned you're cheap. OK, so I'm cheap. Bring on the cookies.
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