The Perennial Hibiscus: Written for my Mama Lola, Creative Writing Class, Louisiana Tech UniversityShare.. Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 3:06am

Lately, Lola’s window seemed to be her best friend. From her chair, where she sat most of the day, she could see the flower garden. Mexican Petunias bloomed early in the summer with a passionate burst of purple, like the sky just before a storm. Shasta Daisies and white Petunias grew along the edges of the flowerbeds just outside her window. However, Lola’s favorite flower was not ready to bloom. The Perennial Hibiscus was at least three feet tall, and the buds were just beginning to appear. Lola waited patiently. She knew that when the first buds began to open, she would again be reminded of her own home place.

These days Lola could not remember as much as she used to. At ninety-four, memories fade. She could still remember some things, and when her son and daughter came to visit, she knew who they were. But when they left, so did their countenance. She could not recall the visit at all.

She sat and waited, waited for the Hibiscus to open with a promising glow of color. Then one morning, after the nurse took her breakfast tray away and helped her dress, she sat down in her chair beside the window. There in front of her was the perennial memory, blooming in all its radiance.

Lola closed her eyes and reflected on a garden of long ago. A garden in full bloom, her garden, which she had planted as a young woman and watched grow and fade for fifty years. Wonderful sweeps of white Gaura and red Salvia wrapped around the house in beds that she worked, while he was out doing his own thing. Queen Anne’s lace crawled between Pineapple Sage and the old time Verbena her mother had given her when she first started to work the soil. The Verbena started out as a small cutting with a small root system, and in a few years had grown to be a splendid specimen—so unlike Harold, who began their married life promising great things and a wonderful marriage, but in the end became influenced by the cheap dirt and weeds of life and left her and their children to raise their garden alone.

A path made of broken pieces of stone and brick rambled around the beds all the way to the back porch and down to a birdbath in a bed of Perennial Hibiscus and Hydrangeas. The Hibiscus thrived in the full sun that shone on her garden.

Her favorite pastime, after the gardening itself, was sitting on the back porch, coffee in hand, watching the sun peak over her flower garden. A hazy glow fell through the sky, between the tall pines and into her garden. How beautiful the Hibiscus was in the freshness of the day. If only her life with Harold were so nice.

Lola started each morning with urgency about her, wanting Harold to be truly hers again. She wanted him to want her as he did in the beginning. She woke him gently each morning with a kiss. She brought him a tray of homemade biscuits and fried eggs. The aroma of the hot coffee stirred his senses, as the kiss did not. So started a lukewarm morning of arguments that grew more intense with the heat of the day, and, like the Hibiscus that was fading outside in the hot sun, so was their life together ... and then he was gone.

“Miss Lola, are you asleep in your old chair again? Miss Lola?” The nurse ran to call the family. Lola’s daughter Katherine walked in the room and saw her mother sitting by the window. As she bent down and kissed her on the cheek, she took her mother’s lifeless hand in hers. Outside Lola’s window, she saw the flowers staring back at her.

“You always loved those Perennial Hibiscus, didn’t you, Mother?”



BY Debbie Aycock Williams