She gave me a bright red amaryllis, the really-tall kind, the really-big-bulb kind, the really-broad-and-long-leaves kind, only it had no leaves and its future blossom was only a short stock attached to a fat bulb when I first unwrapped it. She was very surprised a year later when I told her it was blooming again. She thought I would have tossed it out after the flowering, which is the thing people often do with amaryllis. She knew I liked flowers, but she didn’t know I was an amaryllis keeper.
Now she is gone and I still have the amaryllis. . This year the flower was a little smaller than it has been, telling me that either the bulb is getting too old, or its big pot is too small, or maybe it is telling me something else that I just don’t understand. It is not all that easy to understand precise details given to you by an amaryllis.
I am glad I did not tell her the flower was getting smaller. It was huge and opulent the last time she heard about it. And I will just keep on doing the best I can, as I did when she was here, comforting myself by remembering that everything has its season, and even the really-beautiful, even the really-exceptional cannot stay with us forever.
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