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Every year on my birthday, from the time I turned 12, a white gardenia (栀子花) was sent to my house. No card came with it. Calls to the flower shops were not helpful at all. After a while I stopped trying to find out the sender's name and I was just very pleased with the beautiful white flower in soft pink paper. But I never stopped imagining who the giver might be. Some of my happiest moments were spent daydreaming about the sender. My mother encouraged this imagination. She'd ask me if there was someone to whom I had done a special kindness. Perhaps it was the old man who I looked after when he was ill. As a girl, I had more fun imagining that it might be a boy.
One month before my graduation, my father died. I felt very sad and didn't want to go to the coming graduation dance at all. And I didn't care whether I had a new dress or not. But my mother, in her own sadness, would not let me miss any of those things. She wanted her children to feel loved and lovable. In fact, my mother wanted her children to see themselves much like the gardenia—lovely, strong and perfect with perhaps a bit of mystery.
My mother died ten days after I was married. I was 22. That was the year the gardenia stopped coming.
