San Francisco Flower

    I am not a flower lover. It just so happened that I was entrusted the key to our room. Thus starts the beginning of my everyday responsibilities of waking up five in the morning and doing lots of odd jobs every now and then. One major part of my routine was finding three fern leaves, or as we commonly call it – pakô. At first I have no idea what the hell is pakô so the “ayun oh, sa gilid, ayan ayan, hindi iyan, nasa harap mo na turuan portion” lasted around five minutes in our school garden. 

   Over time, I have developed my personal preference whenever I set out my journey of picking up pakô: lusciously green and of the same sizes. The next thing that I did was to fill the translucent and longitudinal vase with tap water. Now, where is this now vase-with-three-ferns displayed? It was placed at the center of our teacher’s table, surrounded by a calendar, pen holder and table trays. But it did not end there. 

     One morning, during the first week of school, I saw my teacher bringing out three orange-colored flowers which have a shape that resembles a bird's beak for it is elongated yet pointed at the end. I was mesmerized. Captivated by its unusual shape and bright orange color. When I asked her its name, she said it’s called a San Francisco flower. I don’t know if my memory serves me right, or I just misheard it or something. But that was the name that stayed with me since then. For the whole year, I do this simple yet beautiful flower arranging, changing the ferns and the flowers weekly, while replacing the water every day, arranging it in a way that the flowers are at the center engulfed by the ferns, with the ferns slightly elevated, pointing at different angles. 

          It has been six years since then, and I greatly miss that act of cutting the ferns bare-handedly, refilling the vases with water and seeing it being illuminated by light, and of course, touching and simply staring at the orange flowers, then feeling mysteriously purely happy. It was only last year that I got to know that it’s rather called birds of paradise. But as romantic that I am, it will always be San Francisco flower for me. And I hope to see it again, and have my own same flower arrangement inside my room.