Every year on my birthday, from the time I turned 12, a white gardenia was delivered to my house in Bethesda, Md. No card or note came with it. Calls to the florist were always in vain--it was a cash purchase. After a while I stopped trying to discover the sender’s identity and just delighted in the beauty and heady perfume of that one magical, perfect white flower nestled in soft pink tissue paper.
But I never stopped imagining who the anonymous giver might be. Some of my happiest moments were spent daydreaming about someone wonderful and exciting but too shy or eccentric to make known his or her identity.
My mother contributed to these imaginings. She’d ask me if there was someone for whom I had done a special kindness who might be showing appreciation. Perhaps the neighbour I’d help when she was unloading a car full of groceries. Or maybe it was the old man across the street whose mail I retrieved during the winter so he wouldn’t have to venture down his icy steps. As a teenager, though, I had more fun speculating that it might be a boy I had a crush on or one who had noticed me even though I didn’t know him.