A Brooklyn Girl’s Guide to Sunday: The Nostalgia of Found Flowers

When I was growing up, I was always picking flowers. I would pull them off bushes I walked by or out of other people’s lawns, crouching down and pretending to tie my shoe but really swiping a daffodil or snowdrop in the process. I was a little thief, snatching cherry blossoms off trees, reveling in their feathery petals and stuffing them into my pockets. I didn’t stop at flowers; leaves were fair game, and in the fall our entire kitchen table was covered in a rainbow cascade of leaves, from maple red to chestnut golden. On hikes I would wander off alone, lost in my own mind, and then would end up back on track with the group holding a giant bouquet of things I picked up absentmindedly on my journey.

Instead of just letting them wilt and pass on, my mom would always sit with me, sometimes for hours, flowers on one side and a stack of books on the other. She would help me lie them out between the pages and then stack the books on top of each other so that the weight would press down on the flowers. It’s one of the best ways to keep the flowers you love. And even now when I open some of my old books, there they are, the past flowers of my dreams and adventures, stuck between the pages.