A sentimental gesture? Yes.

***

I don’t remember the circumstances. I remember the greenhouse. Greenhouses were made of glass, back then. This one was a private greenhouse on a large estate outside the town of Sherbrooke, Québec.  I was nine or ten. We were visiting with our mother. Who the owner was, I don’t know – a woman “of a certain age” who spoke English. Her greenhouse was filled with chrysanthemums in full bloom. The large ones, with petals curling inward like the fingers on two hands forming a ball. White ones, bronze-colored ones, purple and mauve, yellow. I was astounded by their beauty, and by the luxury of it all. The feeling remains to this day.

Because of their flowering season? In France, chrysanthemums are the item flowering tombstones on this, All Saints Day. Because of that long-ago visit to a woman’s greenhouse, they hold no morbid associations in my mind. But sentimental ones, yes.The large chrysanthemums are terribly expensive. I’ve settled for the small ones.

Sadness? Some. I have nothing against sadness or sentimentality – they don’t preclude joy the way self-pity does. (But there must exist some need for self-pity too, or why would we experience it despite the discomfort it inspires?)