Daffodils

I had just moved into a cheap rooming house to attend college, and was finding all this sudden anonymity unnerving. The building consisted of only two dozen small rooms in front and one dozen larger rooms in the back, but up to this point it was the largest collection of humanity I had ever shared an address with. I tried not to imagine all the unknowns living under the same roof.  

The long-haired young man in the room next to mine looked a bit scruffy, but after I talked to him, he seemed okay enough. He had the curious habit of never locking his door, not even when he went out. This made some sense when he pointed out he had nothing in his room for anyone to steal. It made more sense again when I learned that he had just been released from prison.  

Late in April, a charitable society began its yearly flower selling campaign selling to raise funds. I gave in to the impulse to buy a bunch of them.  

Home again, I popped the flowers into a glass and set them on the window sill. At last, winter was over; color and warmth would return to the world.

I thought of the young man next door, with nothing in his room, and debated giving him some flowers, back and forth. Why should I give any of them away? What if he took some unintended meaning from them? Did men even like flowers?

After some internal debate, I finally decided to knock on his door and at least offer him a few. His reaction? He smiled, a genuine smile of pleased surprise, and said, “Nice smell,” and thanked me. I realized that he probably appreciated them all the more considering the bareness of his room.

When I next left the house, I looked up at my window. On the sill my remaining flowers proudly stood, brightening up the drab front of the old brick rooming house.

I was oddly surprised by what I saw in the next window. The rest of the original bunch was brightening my neighbor’s window sill, doubling the impact of my purchase on the front of the building.