Where Wildflowers Grow
Rain, the pelting, driving, summer rain that falls on these Carolinas, forced us to take shelter under the overhang of a store. After the wringing and shaking out and the first relief of being out of the downpour came the question: Now what?
“Maybe they sell umbrellas in the store,” my husband said. He disappeared into the building and returned with a discovery. In the back of the store was a country-western nightclub. The band would be on in five minutes. Was I game?
It sure beat standing under the dripping eaves! We went inside and were seated, and in a few minutes the band began to play.
This was quite a band. The lead guitarist, blond and long-haired, hopped and gyrated among billows of multicolored smoke. The sounds were high decibel, but the beat was good to dance to.
There weren’t too many of us on the floor. Most of the club patrons were seated at the bar, among them a hefty couple that looked as if they had walked off the set of a Hell’s Angels movie. The young woman was dark-haired and dour; the man wore a muscle T-shirt and had multiple tattoos.
Suddenly, the lead guitarist quit his prancing to announce that he was dedicating the next number to a biker couple who’d just come from their wedding. The tattooed man led his bride to the dance floor, followed by their friends—and us. As we danced past them, my husband called out, “Congratulations!”
The bridal couple looked astonished. And then smiled so sweetly. “Why thank you, sir, ma’am,” the man said, softly.
His reaction put me in mind of a morning several years back when we’d been visiting our son in New York State. I’d taken a solitary walk, reveling in the abundance of birds and wildflowers, when I heard the roar of a motorcycle. Looking up, I saw a bushy-bearded, much-tattooed biker rumbling down the deserted, rural road.
I stepped to the side of the road to give him room, and he passed me in a whoosh of sound. Then he stopped his bike and got off.
I felt an adrenaline rush of pure panic as all of the horror stories I’d ever read rushed to my brain. Fear rooted me to the ground as that muscled, bearded figure advanced toward me and then detoured into a gully, where he commenced picking wildflowers. Seeing me stare, he shrugged sheepishly.
“My mom likes them,” he growled.
From childhood, we’re taught not to judge a book by its cover, and I believe this with all my heart. Sometimes, though, I slip up. Sometimes, when I come up against someone who doesn’t conform to my ideas of good taste or behavior or belief, I begin to pigeonhole them. No matter that I shrink from the idea of stereotyping, I do the very thing I abhor.
But when I’m wrong—and so often I am—I’m both humbled and overjoyed that my core belief is right after all. And that there is beauty to be found in as many places as wildflowers grow.
Maureen Crane Wartski, who makes her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, has taught high school English and writing, and she conducts writing workshops throughout the country. She has authored many young adult novels, including the award-winning A Boat to Nowhere. She has written short stories for Boys’ Life magazine and for anthologies such as Join In: Multiethnic Short Stories. Ms. Wartski’s book, Yuri’s Brush with Magic, was recently published by Sleepy Hollow Books.