Inspired by a friend who took this challenge (Thanks Kim!) and created some beautiful artwork, I’m embarking on the 100 Day Challenge (or 100 Day Project).

My daily repeated activity will be 15 minutes of writing. About anything. Ten minutes to clean it up. Five minutes to post it with a visual (If possible. Since I love visuals). If this gets so it takes too long each day, I’ll go down to 10-5-5.

I’m giving myself no limits. I might write fiction, opinion pieces, research, questions, quotes, poems, lyrics, gibberish, recipes…who knows! It won’t be perfect. There will undoubtedly be typos and grammar issues. Some pieces may be incomplete—and stay that way. No limits! Just write and share. Every day for 100 days.

Wish me luck!

Please Don’t Give Me Flowers

or No Flora for Flora

Flora didn’t like flowers, which was a problem given her name.

“Who doesn’t like flowers?” said her mother who had bequeathed the name, who was a horticulturalist and loved flowers.

Flora had nothing against flowers really, the colors were beautiful. She knew they probably smelled wonderful to everyone else. Problem was that Flora had terrible allergies, and most flowers made her sneeze. Then it got even worse. It turned out she was extra sensitive to smells, just born that way, with some rare condition of which she couldn’t pronounce the name. And so while the perfume of a rose might make one person hum, it was a sickly sweet odor to Flora that made her want to vomit.

 Flora could never visit her mother at work. Her mother worked in a Garden Center, was co-owner. Her whole world was flowers. Except Flora. Outside of Flora‘s home, at the center and select clients’ houses, her mother kept wonderful lush gardens, living rainbows that made entire neighborhoods smile with the scents of lilac and lemon, the kind of atmospheres that inspired paintings and songs. 

With great reluctance and resentment—Flora supposed—her mother had torn out her lovely home garden when Flora was five years old, when it was clear without a doubt what was making her daughter sick, when test after test after test at the hospital made it undeniable. And pronounced it incurable. Now, in the place of that magic fairyland of crayon-colored blossoms, were rows of succulents and cacti. Even some of those flowered. If they had a scent, Flora’s mother’s had to clip the pretty buds as they desperately tried to open. One time, in homage to her mother’s sacrifice, Flora took out the tiny unopened buds from the green bin and buried them in the back with a cross made of popsicle sticks (from her homemade popsicles of water and a hint of lemon).

Because of Flora’s sensitivity to smells, certain foods were also repugnant. Cake frosting at birthday parties was overwhelming. Curries, like the ones her father‘s family made and he grew up on were intolerable and made her run away, gulping air through her mouth, pinching her nose red. 

There were hazards in every day occurrences. Like When the neighbor’s dog pooped on their lawn, when the garbage trucks roll through on Thursday mornings, and most every day in early spring when the citrus trees bloomed. 

One time when a skunk sprayed in the neighborhood, her parents had to take her to stay at her grandmother’s apartment. Flora liked Grandma’s place. It was in a sterile retirement center, one of those upscale ones where all the residents ate three meals a day in the dining room and all the flowers were plastic, dusted regularly. Grandma had a small kitchen but never used it except to make tea, for the most part. So, there were no kitchen smells in Grandma’s apartment. No smoking was allowed in the building. And Grandma didn’t care for perfume. The only issue was the occasional scent of urine that old people sometimes have. But because of the upscale nature of the place, the residents kept themselves clean or someone else helped them. 

 Flora had started going to Grandma‘s apartment after school in fourth grade, where it was easier for her to concentrate on her homework. It was in the opposite direction from home on the bus, a terrible commute for her mother to pick her up at the end of the day when it was dark. But it was worth it if Flora was happier, her mother would say, even though she didn’t smile when she said it. 

As a result, both of her absence from home and her sensitive nose, Flora never really got to know the other kids in her neighborhood. This was a problem, because she became a sort of enigmatic figure, the weird girl, the antisocial girl, someone whispered about. Most kids did not know about Flora’s disease for a long time. It was worse when they found out. 

 The knowledge of Flores sensitive nasal passages amongst her peers coincided with early puberty, a cocktail for misery. Kids started doorbell ditching and leaving smelly things in front of Flora’s house. Sometimes it was bouquets of tube roses or a Tupperware of cheap perfume open to the breeze or cut lemons and oranges or coffee grounds. On the worst days it was more dog shit, cigar buds from someone’s uncle, day-old refried beans in a Taco Bell bag. Flora became the local science experiment, a living chemistry set. If the kids had known, they would’ve realized they were creating a hypothesis each time and testing their subject to see if the reaction was as expected. That’s how Flora chose to look at it. When she could. 

Now that she was sixteen, besides her mother and her books and puzzles and her stuffed bear Frosty, and a few other nostalgic comfort toys, there was only one other thing that drew her back home each day. Jake.