BETTER THAN NOT BAD

When presented with the same set of facts, we arrive at many different conclusions.

This is what makes the world contentious. This is what makes the world interesting.

Fact: it is springtime.

Fact: many people enjoy the sight of blooming flowers at this time of year.



Fact: I am one of them. I visited my neighborhood garden center yesterday; the last time I saw that level of retail frenzy was during a regrettable visit to Toys R Us on Christmas Eve. Our long-drawn-out winter and anemic spring apparently led to pent up demand in the floral consumer. Collectively, we are starved for blossom, new growth, tender shoots of green.

I made a bold decision for the planters on my patio and the pots of my front porch. Instead of going with a color scheme, I made a narrow botanical selection. This spring, it’s all pansies. Different colors, different sizes, but all pansies. Although the word ‘pansy’ is an insulting slur meaning weak, the velvety faced pansy is actually one of the toughest flowers available.

I like the idea of a tough flower.

Early this morning, I got on my bike and pedaled my favorite lake loop, encircling Harriet, Calhoun and Isles. Cool and crisp, it was a splendid time to ride. The path was all but vacant, leaving me to my solitary self as I admired the slant of the sun and the shadows falling across the lawns. The lakes mirrored back the azure hue of the polished sky. Perfection.

It smells of spring outside. It is a fresh smell that combines the loamy richness of earth/dirt with the tang of newly cut grass. As I whizzed along I also caught breaths of the extravagant perfume of flowering trees, sprinkling their pink and white petals like floral confetti.

The pleasure of the experience is the feel of my body pumping along in the great outdoors. But I also enjoy the ride because of the homes that face the path. I am particularly entranced by the mansions that ring Lake of the Isles. Many of them are stately structures, classic in style and impeccably maintained. I have my favorites that I admire on every trip: the darling faux English cottage, the massive Tudor, the shuttered Dutch Colonial. I have ridden this path often enough to note not just the structures themselves but their architectural features—the pitch of a roof, the graciousness of a front door, the pillars on a porch.

After spending time with my hands in the dirt, I took special note of the flowers in many of the yards. I have never been much good at managing a garden so that hue and height, texture and timing of floral growth coordinate into a unified plan. Lacking this skill myself, I particularly admire it in others. Many homes that I passed had showcase gardens, cleanly mapped and executed, offering a pleasing mix of bud and blossom. Taking in the beds of technicolor tulips, I felt grateful to live nearby, to be on a public path where I could be exposed to such splendor.



Yeah, I can’t pull off the garden thang, but I can put plants in pots. Container gardening, they call it. Pretty much every mansion I pedaled past has a few grand planters out in front, usually flanking the front door or front step. Terra cotta, stone, ceramic, selected to match the manse. Checking out a particularly lovely pair of pots on the doorstep of a baronial timber-crossed residence, I idly wondered how easy it might be to steal them. Not that I would attempt such a thing, of course. It’s just the sort of thing that crosses your mind when you’re on an early morning bike ride.

There were many pots that I admired--for their floral design, their blend of color and texture, for the sweetness of the posy potpourri.




Then there was the pot that made me chuckle.

This pot of flowers sits at a jaunty angle on the porch of one of those modern Lake of the Isles mansions, the kind that's all angles and attitude. The architect of this house made no attempt to build a structure to fit in with its century old neighbors.

Check it out: phoney flowers.



They are bold flowers, gaudy and oversized. I had an idea that the residents of this house decided to have some fun with their fakery. Perhaps these flowers were chosen by someone who quite literally doesn’t like getting his/her hands dirty but didn’t want to miss out on accessorizing with that popular porch planter. So: a splash of color without the muss and fuss. No watering or weeding necessary!

Those flowers are fake, but they’re cheerful about it. They don't even try to look real. You have admire the cheekiness, the self mockery that the owner took in putting those bright flowers out on tthe doorstep. They’re playing the game, but not by the neighborhood rules. ("Flowers, huh? I gotcher stinkin flowers right here!")

Riding along with a grin on my fact, I suddenly reflected that I know a thing or three about fake flowers.

II am now days away from reconstructive surgery to make my right breast more comfortable and more, well, lifelike. Last year when I had the mastectomy, I had what they call a ‘lat flap.’ My plastic surgeon removed my latissmus muscle in my back, tunneled it under my arm and pulled it across my chest, where it anchors a saline implant. The implant fills the pound and a half of breast tissue used to be there, including the cancerous tumor and surrounding tissue. This area was radiated 29 times, an effort to make sure any stubborn cancerous cells that may have remained in the area were good and killed. The side effects of radiation is that my skin feels tight and tender, while the flesh beneath created a hard shell over the implant. This was all expected. Last year they told me I would need another operation. This surgery will replace the saline implant with a silicone one and reduce the amount of tension and uncomfortable sensitivity that I feel in my chest, shoulder, upper arm and back.

And they say it will look better too. Better, as in, more natural. I will look more like I once did, back before it occurred to me that an intact body was something to be grateful for. After surgery my breasts will be symmetrical again. I will no longer have to wear special undergarments to keep them aligned and even. I will be not have to make wardrobe concessions and compensations. My form will be more like it formerly was.

My plastic surgeon (ha! that still cracks me up! I have a plastic surgeon!) tells me this is part of the healing process. Looking good, like feeling good, lets you move on past the diagnosis. You carry a scar because something that happened to you. You've dealt with it and moved on. My plastic surgeon reminds me the reconstruction is further proof that I’m cured. Doctors wouldn’t go to all this time and trouble, he says pointedly, wouldn’t bother with symmetry and aesthetics for a woman who was doomed. More to the point, insurance wouldn't pay for it.

But let’s not kid ourselves. I have fake flowers out front.

I have the shape and form of the real thing. Last June right after surgery, still groggy from the anesethesia, I was afraid to look when they took off the bandage for the first time. When I saw what the surgeons had fashioned for me, there was no drama after all. Not bad, I thought. Weird, of course. Not the one I wanted, of course. But not bad.

After surgery I presume I will be Better Than Not Bad.

I I keep thinking about those Lake of the Isles fake flowers. In their own way, they are perfect. They won't grow, or produce aroma, but neither will they wilt or fade when the summer does. They don't need dirt or sunshine or water. They will be as they are: Genuine Real Fakes, authentic in their own way. Chosen for what they are and what they are not.

Because I'm still Me all of me is mine. Because I'm real all of me is Real. Even the fake parts.



Sometimes when I'm on my bike, I could be a danger to myself and others. When gulping in the fragrant breath of spring, I find it almost impossible not to close my eyes with the sweetness of the scent. There are plenty of flowers to smell, I conclude. I don't have to smell them all.

photos by Rebecca Yates