“How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world!” — Anne Frank

There I am, preparing for an evening full of good food and merriment, a dinner party for my friends and family, but instead of moving as fast as possible through my pre-party chores, I’m searching for my garden shears and heavy lead crystal vase, and arranging the cut flowers brought as a gift by one of the guests. It’s a lot of trouble to go through when there are many other things to be done. I sigh, thinking I suppose they mean well, but if my grandmother were still alive, she would be telling me they did not. Even dealing with throwing out dead cut flowers and the water meant to sustain them over the next week will be a hassle. I will need to rearrange those that are left in the vase the ‘gift bunch’ first called home. It will be the gift that goes on taking.

No, this is not important enough to take the place of what I must do before guests arrive, but as the flowers were a gift of sorts, I feel I have a responsibility to take care of them as best I can. I hate doing this and have explained many times to the men in my life why arriving with cut flowers before the hostess can see to all the other things she must do is not a gift but a curse. Yet it’s not just the lack of understanding in the male of the species that causes this trial, for in truth there are men and women alike who make the same thoughtless gesture.  Continue Reading