Minding Rites

This guy I know, a rabbi, Friday nights, on his way home before sunset in winter, always stops at a florist or bodega and buys a bunch of flowers for his wife. Every week the same, a ritual, regardless of her mood that morning, fresh upsets at work, or snarling on the bridge; he brings her roses wrapped in cellophane. But isn’t there a ring of hokiness in that? Why should a good man have to show his devotion? Some things go unspoken; some things get tested on the real world, and isn’t that the place that matters most? So when you told me I should bring you flowers, I joked, “But don’t I show my feelings more in dog walks, diapers, and rewiring lamps?” The flowers, I learned later, weren’t for wooing, not for affection in long marriage, but for something seeded even deeper down, through frost heaves, and which might be, roughly, peace. (It’s funny that I just assumed romance.) Now there’s no peace with us. I wonder what they might have meant to you, those simple tokens, holding in sight what no rite can grow back.