A CARNATION CORSAGE

THERE IS A WORTHWHILENESS TO SPECIAL MOMENTS. I didn’t really see it at the time. We seldom do.

Last Saturday, we had a long-awaited memorial for my mom. She passed in December; COVID. In these days I’ve been thinking about her. One of my memories is her propensity and priority of making special moments for others. It was a clear theme in the stories her grandchildren told about her at the memorial. Many others would have stories to tell. I want to tell this one.

A tradition among churches during my first coming-of-age was something called The Annual Sweetheart Banquet, usually around Valentine’s Day. I experienced numerous ASBs, among various denominations. The format was pretty much the same except when it came to the program. Some churches allowed and encourgaged dancing. I know this because I was a drummer in a group that played gigs like ASBs, Teen Towns, Mixers, etc. There was no dancing though at baptist ASBs. Usually, there was a speaker, maybe a friend of the pastor or maybe the pastor himself, who would tell corny jokes like: What did Winnie The Pooh and John The Baptist have in common? Same middle name.

There would be a dinner prepared and served by the ladies of the church—usually ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, Jello with something suspended in it like carrot slivers, and cake. At each placesetting there would be a little cup with candy hearts and another with mixed nuts. There were a lot of red construction paper hearts glued to white paper doilies. Maybe the church pianist would play “dinner music” on the somewhat tuned piano in the fellowship hall; a piano that normally only played tunes like “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but on this night might play, “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.”

Teens (as we were known then) would dress up and maybe pair up with a “date”. This is where my mom focused and excelled. She seemed to think it vital that everyone have a date whether they wanted one or not. There wasn’t much to the whole date thing except for having the moment memorialized in a photo of the happy couple standing beneath a heart-shaped arch.

Arranging dates was so important to my mom that I can remember her pimping me out as an escort for dateless young ladies to their own ASB; maybe she was the daughter of a friend or a girl from the school where mom worked. Mom would choreograph the whole thing. She would make ready my wardrobe: a starched shirt, slacks, shined penny loafers, my madras sportscoat and a skinny black tie. In the refrigerator next to the eggs was a clear plastic box containing a carnation corsage for me to give the young lady.

This was before Don McLean juxstaposed the young naivete of an innocent carnation moment against the hard realities of life in his lyric from “American Pie”:

I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died

I wasn’t a broncin’ buck and didn’t have a pickup truck. Fact is, being pre-16, mom would drive me to pick up the date. I would walk to the door wondering if the girl was also getting money to buy a new Beatles’s album for doing this. Clearly my mom was the most excited about these contrived encounters. She wasn’t hoping for a spark that might lead to something bigger. She just wanted a couple of young people to feel special for a moment—the kind that comes from dressing up, sweaty palms, maybe a new friend, a photograph and a memory.

And who knows, maybe it brought back a sweet thought for her of a skinny young soldier from Louisiana, asking a cheerleader from Okmulgee, Oklahoma for a couples skate.