By Steve Wong
Life in Our Foothills, February 2015

This is going to really embarrass my young adult children.

I confess: I committed crimes of passion in my youth. I stole roses when I was courting their mother. Having just ticked off 30 years of marriage, I hope the statute of limitations has kicked in and the University of South Carolina in Columbia doesn’t send its campus cops after me for stealing roses out of the president’s garden.

Back in 1980, I was just a poor college stud falling in love for the second or third time. I was of that sect that took pride in doing without, buying secondhand clothes at the Salvation Army Store, eating apples and cheese, and drinking jugs of the cheapest white wine I couldn’t afford. What little money I did have was wasted on things best not revealed in print—even some 30-plus years later. A haircut? No way. Slightly broken glasses gave me character. Why drive a car (that was usually broke down) when I could hitchhike across town? I took shabby-is-chic very seriously.

Working that poor-is-cool shtick without a girl-friend is one thing: Having a girlfriend

and no money is not cool. Even the most righteous of guys wants to impress their girlfriend occasionally by giving her something special.

My wife-to-be and I met in our senior year. We were practicum students in the journalism school. I played the overly serious managing editor; she the preppy blonde reporter with a Pee Dee accent that could sweeten tea. We were an unlikely couple, but we became the mismatched class couple very quickly.

I was still living in the dorms and she shared an apartment in Five Points with a girlfriend. She never had a knack for newspaper design and layout, which gave me a good excuse to help her after class.

Waiting for the cover of darkness, I would don my tightest and oldest 501 Levis for my walk from campus to Five Points, but I didn’t want to arrive empty handed. I remembered seeing a beautiful and well-kept rose garden on the Horseshoe. It was the president’s rose garden filled with hundreds of roses of every size and color, maintained most properly by an old dude with pruning shears.

At first, I would grab only one or two roses to give the girl who could not lay down a straight line of border tape. She loved getting them, almost as much as she loved me doing her homework assignments.

Most women love getting roses, no matter where they come from. She never asked, but she had to know they didn’t come from the florist. Those ragged thorny ends and my bloody fingertips were a sure giveaway.

As our romance bloomed, the stolen roses increased exponentially. On those special occasions—when I would explain the difference between a pica, point and inch—I would arrive on her doorstep with large bouquets in hand. Oh, Daddy Holderman provided with me many things in my college days, but his roses are what I remember most. The bouquets would have roses of every exotic color and shape and smell. They were really top quality, thanks to the old dude who maintained the garden, but no thanks to Daddy Holderman, who was too busy with student romances of his own.

When our 30-year wedding anniversary arrived this year, I knew I would send my tri-annual (Valentine’s Day, her birthday, our anniversary) dozen red roses to my wife’s office via professional florist.

But in the morning light of feeding dogs, looking for the daily newspaper in the weeds, and wondering just what could I do special on this 30th anniversary, I saw the last rose of summer—a pink bud—in my yard. I just had to pick it. I just had to give it to her.

I just had to remember what joy stolen roses can really bring. •

 

Steve Wong is the marketing director for the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg. His wife of 30 years is Kathy Woodham, director of marketing and public relations at St. Luke’s Hospital in Columbus. They live in Gramling, S.C.