Every year on my birthday since I was 11, a white gardenia (栀子花) was sent to my house. No card ever came with it. Calls to the flower shop were not helpful at all. After some time I stopped trying to find out the sender's name and was just pleased with the beautiful flower, in soft pink paper.
I couldn't stop imagining who the giver might be. Some of my happiest moments were spent daydreaming(幻想 )about the sender. My mother encouraged these daydreams. She'd ask me if I had been especially kind to someone. Perhaps it was one of my classmates, Perhaps it was the old man who I once helped. As a girl, I had more fun imagining that it might be a boy that I had met.
A month before my high school graduation(毕业), my father died. I was so sad that I became completely uninterested in my coming graduation dance, and I didn't care whether I had a new dress or not. My mother, in her own sadness, would not let me miss (错过) any of those things. She wanted her children to feel loved. In fact, my mother wanted her children to see themselves much like the gardenia: lovely, strong and perfect.
My mother died ten years after I was married. That was the year the gardenia stopped coming.
