Her memories are kept in a jar by the fireplace.
Varying shades of blue give life to the pale white of the old earthware jar, a gift from her uncle when she was twelve. It has held many collections in it's life; once pennies, then candy. An airplane plant lived in the pretty jar before it outgrew its home and moved on.
She began collecting flowers when she was eleven years old and in the Girl Scouts; they were from hikes and camping trips. Every flower that was she collected, or was later given to her, she kept. She started by saving them in a big pressbook after drying and desiccating them under the weight of a dozen volumes from the family encyclopedia. She would tape them to the pages of a huge scrap book, with captions to describe the people and circumstances. Poems, pictures and reflections often accompanied the flowers to their pressboard tomb.
But the roses were treated differently; she didn't dare commit the sacrilege of burying the roses along side the mundane flowers she kept in the book. When a rose began to wilt, she took it from its vase and lay it out on satin handkerchiefs to dry. When firm enough to stand upright, she transported them with reverence to a dry vase in her bedroom; never were there more than a dozen in any one vase -- her imagined number of perfection.
Her parents died when she was still in college. She transferred to a local university and continued her education. She had inherited the home and turned it from her parent's home to her own. The antiques were packed away into a collection of their own, and she moved into the master bedroom from the one of her youth. She turned her old room into her Rose Room. The carpeting, walls, ceiling and fixtures were all white; the walls were bare but for simple white curtains and shades around the windows. The dresser by the wall held no clothes in its drawers, nor were designs carved into its sides; her old bed was unadorned and its sheets and spread boasted no pattern. No thing, save roses, was given recognition in the room; even pictures, drawings and other representations of the flower-of-the-heart were taboo in this sanctuary. The vases flourished on dresser and night stand; on shelves and at table they sat, their dear charges rising proudly on dehydrated stems. The roses were magic, she felt, because they required no captions or pictures to call up the instance or man associated with this or that vase. It was a phenomenal tribute.
Her collection came to its grand proportions from her association with the theater; she had been involved in the arts from an early age, and earned her degree in theater. She was not a superstar, but found major roles in the better part of all auditions; her leading men often gave her roses, but it was mostly gentlemen she met traveling with her regular summer troupe. She carefully packed them and sent them to her home after having them a few days; when she would return from the tour, they would receive proper treatment.
Rose petals first found sanctuary in the earthware jar when the cross-country move came upon her; she landed a bit part in a television series playing the older sister of a boy in high school. Not a great part, but the money was enough to pay the bills. Selling the home and most of her parent's antiques, she found parting with these older collections somewhat painful; she toughened her resolve and sent box after box of items she couldn't sell to charities. But nothing like the hurt she felt when the last room unpacked or cleared was the Rose Room. A fellow actor and friend gave her grief over her obsession, but could not break through.
The shrine could not be moved without destroying many of her beloved collection. She took off an entire week from the job that paid the bills when she wasn't acting, working her way from vase to vase, remembering as she transplanted the petals from stem to jar. Mostly, she cried; her great collection and tribute was slowly changing before her eyes. She also laughed, when the memory overtook her grief for the rose itself; only once did she relish tearing the petals from their birthplace, in memory of the one lost love that likewise tore her heart, then tossing them into the cool earthware jar. The petals crumbled, for the most part, as soon as they fell into the jar; the space they would have taken when young and fresh would have filled the container many times over. They settled into their new home in less space than she would have imagined; the magic of the roses would not permit the jar to fill before she had delivered the entire collection. She took the naked stems, bundled them, and ceremoniously cremated the remains; the ashes were cast into the stream behind the house -- her first parting with a rose.
By the end of her torture, the jar sat, three-quarters full, bathed in the sun from the skylight overhead. The last thing to move out of the shell of her home was her jar; it rode with her in her car across the country, the earthen vessel sharing the front seat with her.
Her new home was a small condominium; there was no room to start a second memorial. It was a foretelling, she suspected, that her collection should continue only in the jar. Her first addition came from a suitor in her complex; when the petals started to turn, she initiated a new ritual. After laying a fire on the hearth, she turned out all the lights in the dwelling and placed the earthen jar before the flames to warm it. She dutifully placed each petal in the pot, and sat back to smell the aroma as the heat cooked the last fragrance from the petals.
The second major shifting in her life, her parent's death the first, was complete. Restoring her happiness would be the work of time. Time did its job well, for she had very little to spare on thinking of things of the past. In addition to her acting, she began directing for a YMCA in the neighborhood. And one time she even forgot to bring home the flowers a young actor gave her in thanks.
She didn't live in a good neighborhood, but she didn't live in a bad one either. Thefts happened in the area with no greater tendencies than any other. And you always say it'll never happen to you.
The second thing she did, when she came in after a late rehearsal, was call the police. The bastards had torn throughout the house with the savagery of starved lions, caroming through the place with such primal indifference. Her home was not the only home ravaged, she was told; a rowdy group of teenagers had been sold some contaminated crack and went nuts, and would she stay put until the investigators come to check on her. She was lucky she wasn't home, they later explained. The family two blocks down had white tape on carpet never soiled with more than mud or a glass of beer.
Her first impulse sent her stumbling into the living room, to the hearth. Miraculously, the jar remained intact; its precious contents did not fare as well. Most of the petals had been scattered from the jar when it toppled, and the invaders had trampled and strewn them in their cavorting. She inhaled deeply and fell to her knees, drawing as much of the debris into a pile with her hands; many of the petals were unrecoverable. Sitting next to her jar, she was silent as the memories cascaded into her consciousness as easily as the petals had fallen from her earthen jar. She remembered their histories as hers in what seemed to be seconds.
As quickly as the inundation began, it ceased. She stood, staring at the pile; her youthful emotion had been boiled away by time and its stresses, and she realized what the rose petals really were. An obsession. The time she spent collecting the roses and later the petals suddenly seemed a waste, spilled on the floor as dried petals.
Her control was complete; it was the third shift in her life, and the third time was the charm. She scooped what she could into the jar, admitting to herself that she wouldn't be where she was without the foundation in theater that many of the petals recalled. But many memories are allowed to be forgotten, and she needed to clean those out of her life.
Without a second thought, she began cleaning with a Dustbuster. The remaining dust and debris drawn in like an deep breath, only to be exhaled as an actor sighs in relief at the close of a show.