THE HYDRANGEA THIEF

What Happens When We Should Have Known Better

A week prior to the “incident,” I had read The Flower Thief to my grandsons. A beautiful book about an overprotective squirrel who finds a yellow flower, decides it belongs to him, and tries to guard it from the wind, rain, and bees with help from his friend Bird.

My neighborhood is full of flowers, and I showed them how many pictures of flowers with bees I have taken around my neighborhood. The book was on my mind when I went on a walk around the lake, and I noticed, for what I felt was the first time, it was hydrangea season.

Our streets were drowning in them.

That’s what attraction feels like. Something that has been there all along suddenly catches your mind’s eye. A heightened sense of awareness draws you to it. Space opens up and begins to fill up with desire, potential, possibility.

In science, attraction is defined as a physical force that pulls objects toward each other, like gravity or magnetism. Turns out attraction is the fundamental “glue” of the universe. Without attractive forces, matter could not exist, and the universe would be nothing more than a random, featureless cloud of isolated particles.

My mind wandered to thinking about my youngest daughter’s wedding coming up. How every marriage begins with attraction. How children are born from attraction. How stunning hydrangeas look as they age. 

I thought, I am going to knock on doors and ask if I can take some of those hydrangeas off people’s hands and use them to experiment with color. Maybe even make flower arrangements for the wedding. 

Which was 5 weeks away.

I knocked on the door of one property. The woman who answered through her Ring camera told me I could have a few.

I went home, got my little scissors and a tote bag, came back, and mindfully I clipped five or six flowers near the bottom, in places the homeowner would not notice. I followed a different path on my way home. Not sure why, but I remember making a conscious choice on that fork in the road.

Sure enough, I ran into three or four (could not tell) enormous hydrangea bushes between two homes, spilling over into the street.

I thought, Oh man, these are right on the street, and I did not have to step on their property to clip them. However, I still knocked on their doors. Nobody was home. Certain that no one would notice, I decided to pick only a couple, the ones clearly sticking out into the street.

Then, as I clipped the last one, the woman across the street came out of her home and said, “I’m sorry. Do you know the homeowner?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“I’m sure my neighbor would share them with you,” she said, “but it would hurt her feelings to know that you took some without asking.”

“I totally understand. I’ll knock on her door and let her know,” I said.

I did. She wasn’t home. Then I left.

A subtle rush of misery came over me and a thought popped into my head.

I can’t believe this woman thinks I am a flower thief.

“She should know better.” They are in the middle of the road. I did not step foot on anyone’s property. Clearly, you see my little bag. I’m a neighbor. We pay taxes. If you are certain the woman would not mind, then why are you trying to make me feel guilty about hurting her feelings? In a few weeks they will be cut or dried up.

In her mind, I’m sure I was the one who should have.

She would go on to tell the tale of how she saved her neighbor’s hydrangea bush from a suspicious woman wandering around her street cutting people’s flowers. I’m sure all her friends would have agreed: It was I who should have known better.

And bonus, possibly assume I didn’t care about other people and their yards.

I would have gone about my day and later tell my own version of the events. Possibly for years to come. This should-have-known-better moment quickly turned into guilt.

Naturally, I began rehashing it to justify my innocence.

Clearly, I had a small bag. I couldn’t have made a dent even if I tried. There were hundreds hanging in the middle of the road, collecting dust. With so many dying on overgrown bushes, how can anyone possibly be upset about a few being cut to bring joy to someone’s table? The bush was so full, no one would miss them. Then dismissing the thoughts as ridiculous. Saying to myself, I don’t care. It happened. Moving on.

BUT. I did know something that maybe others didn’t.

As in, ruminating about these moments, having imaginary conversations with the person who caused them, or venting to everyone about it to relieve guilt over something as small as a couple of hydrangeas, was a sign. The moment had felt like shame to me and possibly pride to her.

So I looked up the law to know if I was truly guilty.

I was.

I had no idea that legally, even from the middle of the road, they were still someone else’s flowers. And therefore destruction of property. Had I known this, I would have come back another day and asked the property owner.

Me not knowing did not make me bad.

It made me someone who didn’t know.

And now I did.

I had done something wrong without knowing it was wrong. The guilt was real. What I needed was accountability.

I remembered The Flower Thief.

In the story by Alice Hemming, Squirrel becomes hyper-protective of a new spring flower, fearing a “flower thief” will steal it. He goes to extreme lengths to guard it, even accidentally blocking its access to necessary sunlight and air.

His best friend Bird becomes the voice of reason, helping Squirrel understand how nature works. Squirrel learns that the flower does not belong to him alone. The story concludes with a beautiful explosion of springtime blossoms, and Squirrel happily recognizes that wildflowers are free, shared, and meant for every creature to enjoy.

Standing there with my little bag and my little scissors, I realized I was not the squirrel.

I was the bee, following my attraction. I was trying to carry a little bit of beauty to my daughter’s wedding, to experiment, to make something beautiful with what was already growing in abundance.

She was the Squirrel.

She saw someone near her friend’s flowers and did what friends do: she tried to protect what she thought belonged to someone she cared about.

Being territorial is not the same thing as being protective.

Guilt is not the same thing as wrongdoing.

The person I thought should know better had led me directly to something I needed to know.

Cutting flowers that spill onto public property is against the law.

I was guilty of doing something I didn’t know was wrong. I’m pretty sure not a lot of people know this.

It was time for me to bear the fruit of my knowing.

First I went back and knocked on the neighbor whose feelings might have been hurt. I started with, “You may not know this, but it turns out I am a flower thief.” Then I told her about the book. What I found out about the law, which I didn’t know, and how much I wanted her to know that I cared about her flowers.

Then I knocked on the other neighbor’s door. She said, “I don’t care. Come on in. Take as many as you want.” I spent an hour hanging out with her, talking about art, books, and, of course, flowers. She sent me home with a bag full of hydrangeas she had in the back.

The woman who should have known better was next, but I ran out of time.

For a minute I thought maybe I could let the neighbors tell her the story. That would have been easier on me.

But no, I had to tell her myself. That’s how you train yourself to see confrontation as disclosure rather than conflict and stop being afraid of losing your shit: rejection, humiliation, or worse, abandonment.

If I did not have the conversation myself, I would never know what she knew that I didn’t. And she would never know what I needed her to know about me.

That is the power of language.

It allows us to know together so we can belong, become, and bear the world we know is possible.

The next morning I walked back to the home of The Squirrel.

I knocked.

When she opened the door, she did not recognize me.

“Hi. You’re not going to believe it. I am the woman who was stealing flowers from across the street.”

She was surprised and started to apologize.

I said, “Wait, no. I’m here to tell you that I should have known better, but with the caveat that there is a whole reason there is something I need you to know.”

She called her daughter over. Now I had both of them listening.

I told them the whole story.

My daughter is getting married. I wanted flowers. I had asked several neighbors. People had given me flowers. Then I came around the corner and saw those hydrangeas.

“I was like a bee, and beelined right to them.”

They told me something I did not know. She and her daughter had talked about me after she stepped out of her comfort to ask me if I knew her neighbor. She had been conflicted over it, but my response to her made her feel better.

“You weren’t defensive at all. We could tell you cared.”

I said, yes, I acted like I cared, but the guilt I felt could have caused me to tell the tale of a hyper-vigilant squirrel instead if I didn’t share what I knew with you and told you I cared.

And that I had actually done something wrong without knowing it. We laughed when I told her about the law.

I told my newest friend, “A conversation like this gives you a superpower to confront what we know rather than what we don’t.”

Instead of, “Oh God, I don’t think I can talk to this person,” it feels like, “I cannot wait to have this conversation with this person because I really want to disclose what I know and understand what she knows that I don’t.”

I told her that this “attraction” had led me on a wild adventure, a beautiful story to tell, and a great gift: new friends and access to all the hydrangea plants I needed.

I started to say goodbye when she asked me when my daughter was getting married.

Then she said, “Follow me.”

“I have a hydrangea bush. Take all of them.”

I walked back there.

The bush was exactly the color palette of my daughter Mia’s wedding colors, which none of the other hydrangeas fully had.

Every single shade.

The woman who had caught me stealing flowers gave me an entire fucking hydrangea bush.

I could not have been given a more beautiful bush.

I could have walked away thinking she had nothing better to do than police flowers. She could have turned me into the woman who steals flowers and didn’t care. We could each have gone to parties and told our version as a form of entertainment.

But really, those would have been ways for me to deal with the misery of feeling guilty for not knowing better, and her misery of being unsure she should have confronted me over a couple of flowers.

Neither story would have allowed us to know together or each other.

Instead, I released my guilt. Admitted what I did and did not know.

I declared that I cared.

I learned that she already believed I cared.

I learned a lot more about my neighbors. I learned more about hydrangeas. I learned how to cut them properly.

And then I was given an entire hydrangea bush in the exact colors of my daughter’s wedding.

I began with a little bag, a pair of scissors, a few flowers, shame, guilt, a woman across the street, and the belief that I had been caught stealing hydrangeas.

I ended up with an abundance of hydrangeas, knowledge about how to cut them, new friends, conversations, accountability, reciprocity, care, and a hydrangea bush in the wedding palette.

An entire fucking bush.

By the time the wedding rolled around, my daughter booked a florist for the wedding with an all-inclusive package. Which meant I couldn’t add my hydrangeas to the mix.

However, unbeknownst to her, my soon-to-be son-in-law’s mother, hosting the rehearsal dinner, sent out invitations smothered in a hydrangea design.

We may know everything there is to know about something until a new experience deepens that knowing with desire, potential, and possibility.

All marriages start with attraction. Two mothers joined by the attraction of two people choosing to become a family. The hydrangea, a beautiful sign of things to come. My hydrangeas were now destined to grace her table.

I had no idea when I picked up my little bag and scissors that I was walking into a story where the flower itself would come to represent almost everything I would experience. I wasn’t looking for a symbol. I was looking for flowers. The meaning found me.

I learned that hydrangeas have long represented gratitude and appreciation, a sincere apology, forgiveness and reconciliation, unity and togetherness, abundance, understanding, and a wish to be understood. The desire, potential, and possibility marriage offers.

The colors carry meaning too. Blue for understanding and remorse, pink for heartfelt love, white for grace and new beginnings, purple for spiritual awareness.

A hydrangea looks like one big flower, but it’s actually made up of hundreds of tiny blossoms growing together.

Or as I like to say, knowing together.

When we know together we do better.

This is my way of sharing what I know.

Gretchen.  Send this to someone you know. 

Author Note

I came to this work not through therapy or a doctorate, but through a bucket of paint. I didn’t hear a calling, and I wasn’t particularly gifted at art. Color became my vehicle for self-actualization not because I loved decorating, but because using paint colors to make myself feel at home changed how I felt about the world.