Being Rose

Names are important.  Biblically speaking, names are descriptions of a persons destiny or their actions in this life.  When I think of a person's name, I think of their face, and their smile, and the uniqueness that is them. 

There are people who are somewhat impervious to nicknames.  I have always been one of them.  Over time people have tried to make different ones stick to me, and I have made efforts myself, but the name Sondra doesn't really lend itself to nicknames, and they usually slip away with lack of use.  

To my husband, I am Rose. This is who I am in his phone, on his lips, and in his heart, and it doesn't matter what my driver's license says.  This is what he wants the whole world to call me.  It would bring him joy every day to hear the name Rose on everyone's lips when they spoke to me.

It started with a rosebush called Her Favorite.  It was here when we moved in.  I am infatuated with it.  Before it blossoms, it looks like any other rose plant.  In fact, it's rather bland.  Then the buds start growing.  At first they are tiny, unimpressive, and camouflaged among the sharp thorns and jagged five-fingered leaves.  Then they get bigger, and bigger.  Each one gets so big it seems like the green sleeve that contains it cannot possibly hold it.  Finally, a hot-pink bud will pop through. That's just the beginning.

Roseling's first beautiful bloom

Roseling's first bloom

Over the next two weeks, that single bud will change color and character every single day as it unfolds itself at a leisurely pace in the summer sun.  Every day I step out the door  into the warmth of the sun, eager to view the days changes.  It's like a brand-new rose from the one that was there the day before.  I see pinks and yellows and oranges that I never knew existed.  Each day, I smile in front of that rose bush, in awe of the beauty of it's creation.

The song "The Rose," by Bette Midler, is one of the first songs I can remember that I ever learned the lyrics to.  I used to sing it to my friends.  :)  My husband heard me singing it one day, out tending my roses.  To my husband, I am that rose.  I am the seed that came in the winter, and turned into the love that is us.

In my yard are more than 30 varieties of roses in pots, buckets, giant teacups, and in the ground.  During the summer, no matter which window of my house I look out of, there are beautifully blooming explosions of color and life.  They surround me when I come and go from work, when I go to get the mail, when I step into my vegetable garden.  Storm tends them all.  They require a tremendous amount of work.  They must be groomed, fed, healed of disease, watered, weeded, and loved.  He has made it his job in life to provide me with this beauty for one reason, and one reason alone: it makes me smile.

Rose's Favorite
Roseling

  He gives me the roses to provide us both every day a living reminder of our love, which has had the power to change both of our lives by creating a bond so close that sometimes we get lost where one of us begins and the other one ends.

We have cloned Her Favorite. It's by far my favorite and most adored rose.  It took five years of love and TLC to make it grow. Last summer, it shared it's first perfect, tiny pink buds.  Every single time I look at it, I am humbled by the incredible depth my husband's love for me.  Right now, Roseling sits dormant in it's bucket, beneath a perfect mound of snow, waiting for spring to amaze me again.