THE WISDOM OF THE PETTED PLANT

My daughter had a wonderful time at the flower-arranging party. But she went home chastened and bewildered. “We spent hours making beautiful bouquets,” she reported in wonder. “Then, when we were completely finished, I reached out ‘to stroke a big yellow rose. And the florist yelled ‘Don’t touch that!’”

There is, she told me, a perfectly reasonable explanation for her failure to anticipate official flower policy. She was raised in a home where plants and flowers, like the family dog, receive at least one daily petting. Geranium leaves as soft as felt release their pungent fragrance under a gentle touch. Marigolds are rough and round. Irises splay their wavy tendrils. Snapdragons stack their columns of pudgy little flower packets, reaching for the sky. And then there are the roses, thorns ensuring caution, their silky petals cradled like spoons in gentle patterned curves. I don’t recall having ever told my daughter to touch the plants. She must have learned it from watching me.

My mother, an ambitious gardener, forced by fate to defend her turf against the threat posed by a curious blind daughter, set the stage for flower touching. “Don’t step on the plants,” she would say. But aside from this one rule, the garden was mine to play in. Not stepping on the plants meant not walking in the garden, or rather, not walking in the garden with shoes on. Bare feet could keep things safe, stepping lightly, never putting weight down a second too soon. But there were other options. I could crawl on my knees or slide on my bum. I could poke away the soil to chart the progress of the fattening beets and carrots. I could squeeze the pods to judge whether it was time to pick the peas. I could search the underworld for the tiny new potatoes. I could pick any raspberry that yielded itself easily into my hand.

There was carte-blanche permission to pet the flowers, in the vase or on the vine, the May tulip cups, the opulent June peonies, the delicate sweet peas of August. By touch I could tell a fuscia from a petunia, a pansy from a dahlia. I was welcome to pull weeds, and I learned early that for every desired plant, there is probably at least one weed that feels almost identical but grows faster.

My daughter, like my mother, has eyes that see perfectly well. Nevertheless, her kitchen is adorned by a display of petted plants. “Come and see my orchid,” she implores. What she means is, touch the blossoms. Count the buds. Slide your hand the length of the long curving stock. Stroke the leaves and give me your best opinion as to whether the stickiness of the surface is some kind of disease.

“I don’t know if it is a disease,” I tell her, sniffing the residue on my finger before wiping it clean. “It seems healthy enough.” I know a lot about plants, yet there is still much that I do not know.

Sensitive in the aftermath of the florist’s rebuke, we wonder together if there are plants that die from a loving touch. Do stroked roses last a shorter time? Does ivy stretch less tall if you use your index finger to trace its starry leaves? Does anyone study these things?

No doubt the florist had her own good reasons for staying my daughter’s hand in the instant before it caressed the magnificent yellow rose. She might have heard the echo of her own mother’s admonishment, or acted upon the wisdom of the scientific community. As for my daughter and me, it seems unlikely that we will stop fondling the flowers. To support our position we look to the homes and gardens of three generations in our family. Abundance and diversity reign supreme. There among the lupines and lobelia, we find no reason to predict the early demise of the petted plant.

This feels to me like a story of victory, a triumph for flexibility and experimentation, a story of generations standing together to do unusual things. It also reminds me of the many times when, for no good reason except my personal squeemishness, I am out in the world, clearly a blind person and at the same time pretending not to be. For example, I am on my way to give a lecture in the education Building, looking for a classroom on the main floor. It makes sense to touch the walls and the doors, searching for a room number, the way sighted people seek out room numbers with their eyes. But I won’t touch the wall, not unless the building is so empty that I cannot hear a single human sound. Somebody might see me touching the wall. Both of us will be uncomfortable. They will think I am strange.

My mother never prepared me for this. How could she? We lived on a farm and rarely, if ever, did we search for room numbers. It is enough to thank her for giving me free reign to explore the world of plants. Out in the front yard I happily pet the flowers every summer day, out there where the neighbours have a full view. If they are bothered by the vision of it, they never drop a hint to me. I only hear them commending the flowers.