valentines day
Honey, don’t give me flowers
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“Here, flowers for you!” The sentence that puts little hearts in the eyes of other women is pure horror for our author. She finds flowers the most impersonal gift in the world. She would much rather have a bouquet of Bifis or something tomorrow. THAT would give her spring fever immediately.
by Marie Stadler
“Please, never give me flowers!” That was one of the first sentences I said to my current husband back then. He was irritated. Flowers – that is, so to speak, the materialized happiness of every woman. “And that’s where the problem lies!” was my reply. Because it’s quite simply like this: I’m not EVERY woman. And I also don’t want to receive gifts that would be suitable for every woman. I think gifts should be something very personal. And by personal I don’t understand the categorization into the flower-loving and flower-giving gender.
Flowers are great – that’s not the reason
I’m not completely stupid now either. I think flowers are beautiful. Especially those in the pot that are allowed to live on. In my opinion, watching plants die is not really an aesthetic experience. Although flowers in a pot in my untalented hands don’t have the greatest chance of surviving, to be completely honest. The problem with flowers is that I don’t think they express what I consider to be the essence of a gift, which is: I’ve been thinking about you. And this is what I want to contribute to your happiness.
My husband can
I don’t want to brag about my male specimen now. Although, well, to be honest, I do want to: My husband can think before giving gifts. I’m so glad I never get flowers from him. Maybe I wouldn’t know how well he knows me otherwise.
Once he gave me a pack of Bifi (shortly before the birth of our first child) because you are not allowed to eat salami when you are pregnant and I was longing for it. He packed the pack in my hospital bag and I realized on the day of the birth: Eating bifi together can be very romantic. Flowers would not have pleased me half as much.
Another time I got a whole tin full of coupons that were very personal. My favorite voucher: “Today you can shorten everything and my head without it annoying me” I’ve secretly retrieved the voucher three times after playing it. The right to my five minutes of impropriety is very sacred to me.
The big exception
I did get flowers once. And that was nice! Why? Because it was still a personal gift. At some point I told him that I used to stroll around on my way to school and therefore came home much too late. I would often pick a bouquet of wildflowers along the way to appease my mother because I was so sorry that she was worried. When my husband, a police officer, was unavailable for hours during the G20 and I wrote him twenty concerned messages, he came back the next day with a bouquet of flowers. “I’m sorry you had to worry,” he said. These flowers were the best present I have ever received. And even though they were flowers.