Photo by Heather McKean on Unsplash
In the Corydon Ave apartment, my 7 x 10 bedroom (which I would later learn is the minimum size a room must be in order for it to be considered a bedroom – the dimensions of the average prison cell are 6 x 8), I had hung a tapestry I had stuffed into a traveller’s backpack four years prior on a trip to Thailand. I hung fairy lights that I purchased at Target the month its Canadian stores shut down. Later they would prove faulty and begin to smoke.
The day I moved to Winnipeg I was gifted a single bed from Corey’s parents (his childhood bed). They also gave me a mirror, with turquoise and gold edges, curdling together in a marble fashion that was nearly vintage but still on the cusp of tacky – the color scheme reminiscent of the dusty rose of the early 1990’s. More than once I had to push the origins of the mirror out of my mind as I sent pictures of my boobs to suitors – the Tinder era was relentless.
Corey’s family was extraordinarily kind to me. The parallels between his family and my own would make my gut churn with homesickness as they invited me, the partnerless Albertan, to family events – Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even family birthdays. I felt at home in the big family setting, even the dysfunctional bits like his uncle drinking too much, Corey’s little brother’s fiancée screaming as she lost her place in Candyland, and celebratory Canada Day fireworks misfiring and elevating the blood pressure of every mother figure present.
Corey’s mom had been a teacher for years, and I recall feeling profoundly homesick but grateful at Thanksgiving dinner, as she wrapped her arms around me in a soft mom-only type of hug and said, “You’re always welcome here, sweetheart.”
Before the wave of emotion could hit fully, she quickly ended the hug and said,
“Now get some pumpkin pie.”
I tried not to chuckle: was I sure Corey’s family wasn’t related to my own? I had never seen food-pushing like this, except for at my own family gatherings. Aunts and moms, deeply concerned with the ratio of mashed potatoes or turkey on a plate (You sure you don’t want more? Coffee, cake? What can I get you?). Or, better yet, my Grandmother’s inclination to say, “You are getting so skinny,” (not true but delighted to hear it), “Have some cake.”
Despite the concerted effort, I was still lonely. Often, I would look to something to fill the void (wine and cigarettes, usually), or in a partner that was not right for me. I didn’t recover from Alex in one fell swoop. It wasn’t like I left Edmonton and suddenly the irreparable became reparable, though this is what I had hoped for. For so long I had been told I was worthless. I needed to absolve myself of that. That said, my choosing a bunch of partners wasn’t a response to a lack of worth. If anything, it was empowerment. I wanted to see yearning in someone’s face and leave it as implacably and easily as a man can. The trouble is people don’t see the feminine approach the same way. I didn’t care. I wanted to finally take control of the decisions I made.
So I did. I met and I dated and I had sex. It was easy, and it was fun. After a series of monogamous relationships, it felt terribly taboo. It felt so risqué to invite someone back to my single bed, listen to the aged springs squeak as I chose empowerment – chose the early finishers and the uncomfortable morning goodbyes (“Want eggs? I’ll call you!” knowing full well I would not call). I do not regret it. Maybe I regret some from the overall experience, but not the period itself. I needed it.
One of my favourite casual encounters was Malcolm. We met on Tinder. Malcolm was a year younger than me. He was from Toronto but moved to Winnipeg for work. He had a high paying job as a financial advisor and a gorgeous apartment in one of the city’s only residential buildings higher than twenty stories. He was a frat boy whose parents were from Jamaica. His dad was a Trump supporter and our values were oil and water. Malcolm cared about keeping his expensive sneakers clean. He kept a clothing steamer at the ready in his apartment for fear of leaving the house with creases in his already professionally laundered shirts. We had fun together and I think in a different life we would have made great friends, but we simultaneously filled a void for the other that was critical, necessary, and importantly impermanent.
He thought Winnipeg was simple and straightforward: “It’s a bit of a joke,” he had said on our first date. I grabbed his hand and demanded to take him to every bar on Osbourne street to prove him wrong.
“I’ll go,” he said, “but Toronto has the Raptors, what do you think is going to beat that?”
“The who?” I asked, as I pulled him into a martini bar.
I took him dancing at the Toad and we poked fun at one another’s dance moves. Mine akin to a dad at a barbeque. I even pulled out the pretend lawn-mower, dramatically lurching my body low and yanking the pretend pull cord until my invisible machine started and I waltzed across the dance floor. Malcolm rolled his eyes and mockingly walked off, only to return moments later. His moves were a combination of hyper-sexualized, but somehow dorky, motions. At one point I tell him that it isn’t a dance at a junior high as he grinds his pelvis against my backside. He throws his hands up in self defense and as I turned around to face him, we kiss.
We mocked, flirted, then mocked and flirted again for three months. There was an unspoken agreement between the two of us that we didn’t ask the other who else we were seeing. It was more than that. It was comfortable in all the typically uncomfortable places, and uncomfortable in all the comfortable places. We weren’t much for being vulnerable. We knew a lot about the other but wouldn’t dig. At the time, my Grandpa was in the hospital and I knew his brother was going through something. We’d take the calls from family in different rooms and return to the other to make a joke.
Once I had family news so upsetting I cried with Clark in the other room while Malcolm was there, my arms shaking and nose pressed into my roommate-turned-friend’s chest, and Clark asked me, “Do you want me to ask him to leave?”
“No, no that’s okay,” I said, “I will go talk to him.” In the year we live together, Clark and I will never formally hug. I feel it’s a boundary left best untouched. I pull my red, ugly face away from Clark’s chest and examine my face in the mirror. I punch him in the arm and say, “You’re a good roomie,” and unroll some toilet paper and honk my nose.
One of the things I love about Clark is when a moment is finished, it is truly finished. He punches back and immediately leaves me in the washroom to compose myself, retreating to his bedroom to straighten his tie and prepare for whatever late night plans he has remaining.
The apartment is small and terribly un-soundproofed. I’ve learned this through Clark’s many sex-periences. I knew Malcolm heard me crying. He sat on our sad grey couch, limbs folded over one another, tips of his thumbs pressed so tight the blood drained white. I moved toward him and feel like I am tearing through tissue paper. We have never been so close as. Never allowed the other’s personal problems infiltrate our nights together. Before I got the call, I had it in mind that we would finish dinner, finish each other, and I would let my head fall peacefully to the pillow before Malcolm had even made his walk home.
“Guess I’m just sad about the bees. Mind if I send you a message tomorrow?”
Malcolm nods quickly and lurches off the couch. I open the apartment door and he shoots a fast kiss on my forehead before exiting.
“I’ll call tomorrow,” he says without looking back, scaling the steps two at a time to the main level.
We had this ongoing thing about the bees going extinct. This year Cheerios was giving away free packets of wildflower seeds to promote their “Save the Bees” campaign. Malcolm was so smug when he told me he had ordered hundreds of packs of seed from Cheerios, saying, “I even made different Gmail accounts so I could get more free seeds! I figure, screw the corporation, save the bees, right? I’m gonna plant them all over the city!”
At first, I was not sure why, but he really gave a shit about the bee population. I obviously understood the premise generally. The bees were (are!) vanishing at an astonishing rate. But Malcolm, the guy I knew to scrub his own sneakers before he’d prevent me walking in a puddle, twist his diamond earrings uncomfortably while I would rail on about the homelessness in the city, or huff as I ask to join me volunteering, was not someone I had pegged as particularly concerned with the bee population. Or helping anything, really. I dug deeper when he told me about the wildflower seed. I had never heard of this promotion, or maybe hadn’t paid attention.
“Cheerios is giving away 1.5 billion packaged wildflowers seeds in boxes so people can plant them! It’ll help the bees pollinate!”
The moment he said it I was stuck with prickles of memory. An old customer at the greenhouse doggedly arriving and asking my dad what he could do about Mexican jumping mint-- he’d taken a cutting to transplant and it had taken over his yard. A man from the government visiting our farm to ensure we weren’t cultivating our own baby’s breath or Tansy for cut flowers. A vein popping from my dad’s neck as I, five years old, blew dandelion seeds toward rows of sunflowers.
I asked Malcolm, “Are they sending the same seeds everywhere?”
He shrugged noncommittally and said, “Bees, baby.”
They were sending the same seeds everywhere. Across North America 1.5 billion seeds were sent. There were no biological reviews. They chose seeds that were good for bees. Good pollinators. This was, by all accounts, good for the bees, but great for General Mills’ publicity.
I hadn’t heard any criticism of this in my greenhouse circles back home and began to understand why Malcolm liked the promo. He loved Cheerios (he’s a child in a grown man’s Armani suit), but mostly he also loved how they’d marketed the bee saving initiative. Like every conversation we’d had, when I told him I grew up on a flower farm, the conversation almost stopped. But then there were bees and his misplaced Cheerios enthusiasm.
I tell him I needed to understand the Cheerios wildflower thing more, but it seemed like a silly idea given the types of seed I assumed they were using.
“Get ready to eat your words,” he says as he pulls up the commercial on YouTube, “You’re going to be ordering your own seeds after this ad.”
The commercial opens with gorgeous, expansive fields. The kind a smart farmer would rent out for a handsome sum if he were thinking ahead. A choir version of Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” somberly warbles in the background as fat, photoshopped bumblebees soar through the shot over flowers they typically don’t use for pollination. The seeds Cheerios were advertising were best for honeybees anyway, but I suppose their narrow ends don’t video as well as the honeybee fluff. Child models with unnaturally tight and neat curls were sniffing flowers that I knew would never smell like anything. A tulip doesn’t really have a smell, but it’s colorful and easy to capture on film. As the ad flickers in the dark bedroom, Malcolm turns to smile at me, prove he is right about Cheerios and the bees, but I am lost.
I am remembering when the lilies began to mature in the perennials section of the greenhouse. How I would excitedly tear toward them with my grandma, my mother, my dad (whoever would join me) and breathe in their surreal aroma. It smelled what I imagined an old-time movie would smell like. Fragrant and spectacular. The way you feel when you suck on an old candy your grandmother hands you. It is rich and delicious, but not of this time. A lily transports you. The smell stays with you. The smell is a memory. It is shockingly sweet and for so many, too much. Those that can handle it will breathe deeply until they can’t anymore. They come up for air with the stain of a deep and difficult to wash orange from their nostrils. The pollen of a lily consumes you so much that it stains your skin. When Malcolm pokes me and smiles for a second time, nodding encouragingly at the ad I will no longer respect and certainly don’t care about, I am remembering springs bygone of my Nanny watering the greenhouse. Watering herself as much as the plants. In dirty George wal-mart jeans, torn at the edges, communing with the soil, returning with yellow and orange streaks on her nose, elbows, forearms, and chest. Her nail beds, darkened damp soil, and soft, pliable skin placing her hand in my own: “I got lost in the lilies again.”
Marketers will never consider sharing a commercial where the perfectly made up child retreats its head from the flower and reveals a dingy, yellow-orange stain on their nose. This makes me sad because the best smelling flowers are littered with pollen. When you breathe it, you are breathing life itself. I think of the times I have felt pity toward a child who came to our farmer’s market stall to only breathe in a pansy. Pansies are beautiful with rich colors but they have no smell. They are edible, but they don’t smell like anything. I want to hand the child a lilac, a lavender, a lily. But they are currently out of season, and the glow that radiates off a mother watching their child instinctively sniff a flower of any kind, nice aroma or not, could be nearly satisfying as breathing in a lily.
I think of the cake my mother made for my 7th birthday with pansies baked into homemade icing and suddenly lose track as my eyes adjust to the shifting frame of the ad. The kids have pulled a few wildflowers (poppies and bellflowers) from the ground as the beautiful, pretend bees float behind them. I notice the children didn’t have any dirt under their fingernails. The glass is shattered at this moment for me. No child in a garden will have nails so pristine. When the commercial is over, Malcolm looks at me and says, “How many seeds should I order you?”
*
I told Malcolm I’d prefer to help him with his seeds. Show him how to plant them. They arrived in gorgeous, shiny packages. The kind of refined-by-petroleum plastic that makes you wonder if you have done a good thing at all. I flip the gleaming pack on its back to inspect what kind of wildflowers the seeds are. There are forget-me-nots, California poppy, yellow clematis, and ox-eye daisy. These are all noxious weeds in certain parts of North America. Two of them here. My blood began at a rolling boll, undulating and at first, seemingly unwarranted. I started to google. All I could find were accolades for General Mills, revenue of 15.62 billion dollars a year, trying to save the bees.
Noxious weeds strangle the surrounding ecosystem.
Kristina Stocks is a writer and researcher living in Edmonton, Alberta with her dog, tomato plants, and partner.