Winter Rose

   Winter Rose is a piece of my writing I revised tonight.  I what happened to a friend of  mine and she just recently asked, "Are you going to write about the girl on the ferry?"

I changed the title five times.  I finally wrote this title and was happy.  It made me think of my Godparents, Yvonne and Clyde in St.Ignace, they have a daughter named Rose.  And being Irish and loving music, my Godfather likes the song, My Wild Irish Rose.  But, a winter rose? That is a spiritual gift. You have to be aware and open to the possibility.  It's not normal, it's not meant to be, but.....it does happen and it's more beautiful than the rose of summer.

It feels good to have revised this piece of memory.  It's not only mine, but it's mine to share.  Anyone that knows me very well knows I love to receive and give "home-made" gifts.  Gifts that money can't buy and only time and love can create.

I can't give you a winter rose but I can give you my story.


  Winter Rose                                                                                             m.madagame 1-28-12
                                                                                         Revised        2-18-12

I saw her just as she stepped off the slush covered marble on the dock at Beşiktaş
.
I noticed the awkward presence about her right away.  When I got a closer look, past her five layers of clothes, scarf covered head and her down-cast eyes, I saw she was about sixteen years old. Now her fumbling made more sense. “She’s just a young woman”, I thought.

Her layers of clothes were dark folds along her fat, young body.  None of the clothes looked warm. But stacked together they looked like they would  protect against the bitter, windy, weather blowing in from the Balkans. Her wet, dirty tennis shoes definitely weren’t any use on this cold, wet, January day.

What struck my attention was the bundle she held with both hands against her chest.  Until she got closer I wasn’t sure what she had all wrapped up like a baby. But when she bent her head down and sniffed I saw the small bundle of roses.  They too were wrapped in many layers. The inside layer was a white mesh with its corners sticking up around the four roses.

She was so happy with herself. My intuition told me she was smiling not because someone had just given her flowers, or because she had purchased the roses for someone else.  Her smiley and bubbly demeanor was because she had bought them for herself!

We both chose a window seat upstairs as the ferry pulled away from the dock. Our seats were facing each other, empty except for us. It was so dark outside the window I don’t know why we picked the window seats.  All we could see were the city lights of Istanbul and the reflection from the window into the ferry cabin.

I picked up my book from my wet bag and started reading.  Every few pages I’d look out to see the city lights, noticing the lights from the huge vessels anchored close to shore on the Bosporus.  I thought about St. Ignace. Sometimes the January storms would force the ships off Lake Michigan to hold up until the storms passed. I remember seeing them lit up at night in the winter out in the bay.

The dark rolling waves made me think about the family of dolphins I saw a week ago. I pictured them under us in the night somewhere. I thought they must be going about their family business or sleeping somewhere next to each other.

Each time I looked up from my book I could see out of the corner of my eye the girl who held the roses. I’d see her smell them now and then.  She too was looking out into the dark night.  I wondered about her. I wondered if she had to work hard each day and return on the night ferry.  I wondered what her family was like.

I saw movement in front of her by her legs and looked over. A petal was falling to the dirty wooden deck by our feet. It landed with its sides up like a little cup. I looked up at her and she averted her eyes from me and looked out the window.

I waited a few minutes and bent over to pick up the petal.  I couldn’t resist.  I smelled it and lightly stroked the silkiness with my fingers. I gently placed it in the back pages of the book I was reading. I made sure it was flat when I closed the book. I felt her lean toward me and I thought, “She probably didn’t like me picking up the petal”.  I looked up at her again and she leaned forward sweetly.  Smiling at me she extended both her hands and offered me the pink rose the petal had fallen from.

I made an “ahhh” sound and reached for the gift. Smiling and crying at the same time. I sniffed the rose and carefully cupped it in my hands.  Time stood still.  I was unable to speak, knowing my English wasn’t going to tell her how humbled I was by her beautiful gesture of love.  In my elementary Turkish I said, “Teşekkur”

She smiled graciously like a princess who had been given a gift from a child.  She said something. I didn’t understand, but her eyes spoke for her. When I looked out the window again we were already about to dock at Kadiköy. She stood up and headed for the stairs with her three roses. I took my rose and carefully set it in my pocket to keep it safe from the cold, put my book back in my bag and got ready for my walk home.