"The Geranium"

“The Geranium”

by Theodore Roethke, 1966

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,

She looked so limp and bedraggled,

So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,

Or a wizened aster in late September,

I brought her back in again

For a new routine—

Vitamins, water, and whatever

Sustenance seemed sensible

At the time: she’d lived

So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,

Her shriveled petals falling

On the faded carpet, the stale

Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.

(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!—

The dumb dames shrieking half the night

Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,

Me breathing booze at her,

She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me—

And that was scary—

So when that snuffling cretin of a maid

Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,

I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,

I was that lonely.

#12.

Upon reading “The Geranium,” I was immediately reminded of something, or someone, I had not thought about in approximately four years: my first and only doll, Mimi. I received Mimi as a gift from my mother when I was 9 months old. Originally, Mimi was a white, terrycloth doll with a peach colored face wrapped in a strawberry-print bonnet. After more than a decade of having Mimi as a bedmate, her terrycloth skin frayed and her bonnet ripped open, exposing her stuffed “brains” to the hazardous world. If most people looked at Mimi’s stretched-out left arm or undetectable facial features, they would assume that she was the remnant of a childhood long past and was meant to be discarded. Many years ago, several “presumptuous” people have acted on these assumptions, whether they have been pre-school teachers or hotel maids. After repeatedly experiencing the pain of losing the friend I loved most as a child, my family somehow always managed to miraculously save Mimi from reaching the “point of no return” (Phantom of the Opera) feared by all children with toys - the garbage can. Mimi’s repeated salvation appears to suggest that I was never meant to share Roethke’s experience of “loneliness” he felt upon losing his closest friend, the geranium. While reading this poem, I knew exactly how he felt at the moment when he lost his geranium. I, too, have shared his bewilderment at the ignorance of people who mistakenly assume that what they consider to be trash, is not in fact someone else’s treasure. I felt compassion for Roethke’s loss because I appreciated how many times I came close to losing what was my dearest possession, my dearest friend…Mimi.