Author’s Note: I wrote this piece in the middle of a very busy and stressful time in my life—senior fall. In the midst of college applications and midterm grades, I found myself constantly worrying about my place among my peers, wondering if I truly fit in among such outstanding students. If they all were doing one thing, shouldn’t I be doing it too? Shouldn’t I be doing it better?
It took me a bit of time, but I finally realized that the answer to this question is no. Thus, this is my reminder (and perhaps yours too) to embrace the strange and different in yourself, to be a weed in a sea of flowers.
Dare to grow.
…
Have you ever heard of bouquets of weeds? No, right?
Yeah, that does sound silly when I say it out loud. But there’s some quirk to it, isn’t there? Some charm? Imagine these little bunches, wispy sprays of green, needled tendrils and barbed-wire roots, wrapped up in a perfect silk bow and delivered on foot, by someone who loves you.
I used to go to this really prestigious university—Westville—with sprawling evergreens and dirt trails that coiled like copperheads, and a sky full of diamonds each night the wind didn’t blow. Picturesque, perfect. Oh and our staple beverage, get this, was maple cola, crafted by a somewhat righteous group of students who called themselves the “woodsmen.” Exclusively male, exclusively barechested, exclusively up at 2:00 am outside my dorm with mallets and spouts, tapping sugar from Athena, our largest maple wood—that experience redefined my understanding of Greek life.
But to my point about weeds. The campus had none. The grass was glossy and sparkled in the sun—all I wanted to do was ruin it.
There was this tradition we had at Westville—you know, each college has one. The Athen Wood scholarship, (as so lovingly named for our mother tree) where each student could apply for an interview slot with Boston Hunter, our president. But the tradition, you see, wasn’t the interview. One day, a clever graduate by the name of Mare, frightened by the sheer number and talent of the other applicants, decided to bring a single rose to the interview, so as to have old Hunter remember him. Some sort of flattery, I suppose. Delighted by his charm and gall, Hunter gave him the scholarship straight away, cancelling the whole of the remaining interviews. Naturally, students begged Mare for the secret, but he wouldn’t budge. So one day, Sabrina, the loveliest redhead south of the Applachain, wheedled it out of him with the help of a cold night and maple liquor (the woodsmen strike again). A rose, she’d proclaimed, triumphant.
The next year, Hunter was presented with such an array of flowers it’s said his office was coated with pollen and crawling with bees. Peonies, petunias, gardenias, tulips, and of course, every shade and shape of rose imaginable. And so, the coveted scholarship interview became a flower show. That’s our tradition.
So came my senior year. My turn to lavish the man in the chair for a chance at success. I must’ve spent hours obsessing over what flowers to buy, what color they should be, how long, what smell, how many. I was a woman possessed, a newly self-proclaimed botanist with a flare for the magnificent.
My clarity came in the form of a truck, which almost took my life one dusky Friday afternoon on the Westville quad. There I was, murmuring about carnations when a giant truck backed into my path, stopping just short of my right booted foot. I couldn’t help but gape at its closeness to my pinky toe, a reaction to which the driver took as a sign of my incomptence, thus refraining from the expected torrent of slander and settling for a pointed glance of, “Kids these days.” I couldn’t blame him—I’d almost walked into a moving van daydreaming of blooms that looked like exploding pom poms. To add insult to injury, the instant this first self reflection crossed my mind, Alice, Westville’s resident nepo baby, pranced around the back and slung open the trunk with a spirited, “Woo!”, revealing thousands upon thousands of candy colored blossoms.
After that, I couldn’t be bothered to buy a single rose.
Four days later, trekking up to my interview, I decided to admit when I’d been beat. Alice had won, in more ways than one: if Hunter said yes to the magnificent floral display, then great. If Hunter said no, Alice could threaten to drown him in the flowers until he changed his mind.
Genius. Despondently, I continued my slog up to the President’s building when I stopped short. I hardly dared to believe it.
Among the rows and rows of emerald beauties that made up the lawn, I saw a beautiful sight. A horribly disfigured, shrunked knob of leaves, topped with a tuft of white fuzz that rustled with the wind. A sudden impulse propelled me forward, and I plucked the spunky thing straight from the ground, nuzzling it with the tip of my nose. It felt like a kiss.
…
“So, Ms. Diaz,” Hunter said, sliding his folded hands across the smooth lacquered table. “You seem to be quite the academic.”
“I’d say so,” I replied, fumbling with the tiny sprout in my pocket.
Hunter considered me for a moment, then leaned forward. “If the flowers come in any float, bucket, or cannon form,” he began, shuddering at the word, “cannon,” (I then noticed the redness of his eyes, dribble of his nose, and fragments of assorted flora in his hair) “Please warn me in advance.”
“Flowers, sir?”
“Yes,” he deadpanned.
“Oh yeah,” I remembered, pulling the weed from my pocket in a flash of movement that sent Hunter reeling. He smiled sheepishly, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. His smile quickly faded when he saw the mangled mass of stem and leaf in my hand, wilted and browning.
“What, may I ask, is that?”
Struck by a sudden idea, and perhaps a “well I’ve already lost” mentality, I raised the plant to my lips.
“I wish for the scholarship,” I whispered, gently blowing on the cream-colored fuzz clasped in my hand. It instantly scattered, floating through the air like the first flakes of winter. It was a beautiful sight.
Hunter tracked the fuzz with soft eyes for a long while, before resting his gaze on me. Wordlessly, he slid open his desk drawer, withdrawing a long, silky roll of parchment, tied with a crimson bow. He placed it on the table in front of me, a delighted, touched look etched in the way his smile curved sideways. “For you, Ms. Diaz,” he nodded, “for pure wit,” he picked up the scroll, holding it out to me, “and grace.”
Needless to say, the flower tradition was cancelled. In fact, the whole event was completely rebranded. What was once the Athen Woods Scholarship is now the Dandelion grant, for one deserving student with a wish, for one deserving student who sees the beauty not just in blossoms, but also in weeds, in the things that dare to grow.
Photo Credit: Unsplash, Ed Stone