The House Full of Flowers

There are now enough flowers in this house for Yuri to begin documenting the situation, which I consider deeply unsupportive. #

I may have bought more flowers. There are mitigating circumstances. First, it is April. Second, they were beautiful. Third, I am an adult with my own money and therefore can apparently create a small botanical problem in my home without seeking authorisation. Yuri counted the vases. This was hostile. «Why are you counting them?» «I’m curious.» «Curiosity killed the cat.» «We don’t have a cat.» «Exactly.» He gave up, which means I won. The house looks wonderful. Not staged, because there are still cables and books and normal evidence of two people living here, but alive in a way it did not during winter. Colour near the window. Tulips on the table. Smaller flowers elsewhere. Sunlight coming through the tall glass and catching petals. I spent the morning cleaning because Easter is tomorrow and some ancient part of me still believes holidays require a clean house even when nobody is coming over. Mom. This is Mom living inside my cleaning habits. I can almost hear her standards. I changed the sheets, cleaned surfaces, reorganised things that did not require reorganising, put music on and moved between rooms in old clothes with my hair tied up. Hardcore first because it works. Then country because apparently flowers demanded it. Yuri helped, genuinely, and I should record this because he will claim archival bias otherwise. By early afternoon the house smelled clean and floral and I was exhausted enough to resent the standards I had imposed on myself. Shower fixed everything. I washed my hair, took too long choosing clothes for a simple afternoon out and eventually wore something I had rejected twenty minutes earlier. Classic. We went out, bought a few things for tomorrow, walked, stopped for coffee. Amsterdam was busy in that pre-holiday way, not frantic, just people carrying food and flowers and bags. I thought about Easter in Italy while standing in a Dutch shop. Not sadly. Memory simply arrives through ritual. Certain foods, certain packaging, the expectation of family voices. Tomorrow Mom and Dad will call. I know this as surely as I know sunrise. There is comfort in predictable love. We came home before evening and I arranged the new flowers. Yuri watched. «Another vase.» «Do not start.» He didn’t. Tea at five had happened late because we were out, but I still had four biscuits when we returned, which makes it tea at five in spirit if not in law. Tonight the house is clean, the flowers are everywhere, tomorrow’s things are ready and I have Angel waiting on the bathroom shelf because I already know which perfume I want for Easter. Mom in a bottle. That sounds sentimental. It is also true. I am happy here tonight, surrounded by Dutch spring and Italian habits, with Yuri moving through the rooms and tomorrow already carrying voices from home before the phone has rung.

Remember me, Eclipse.