Glass Flowers

The woman at the city health center makes glass flowers. At the corner of the large, shared office, behind her wide wooden desk she puts aside the long needles and thread and places them carefully into a plastic bowl of multi-colored glass beads. “When would you like to come for the pre-marriage seminar? Free dates are on the seventeenth and the nineteenth.” she says quite pleasantly. She looks at us through the top of her thinly rimmed glasses, her brow forming an umbrella.

“Seventeenth it is. Please come at around seven thirty to eight in the morning.”

“Did you make these?” I ask.

“Oh, yes!” her face lighting up. “Everyone else turns them into fashion jewelry, but I don’t like jewelry at all. I like flowers.”

“This one…” she takes a set of yellow colored beads, woven together like petals. “This one is going to be a dancing lady. At least I’d like to turn them into a dancing lady. I just can’t seem to get the shape right.”

“Yeah, a dancing lady…” she continues, her voice fading into her thoughts as she admires the beads in her hands. “I just can’t seem to get the shape right.”