The Forbidden Orange Rose

As I opened the screened back door, heading for grandma’s garden, I heard her voice from the kitchen window, just as my feet stepped in front of the old broken birdbath.
”Sugar, remember, don’t pick any of the orange roses.” She said in her southern drawl.
She didn’t have to remind me again. I already knew the orange roses were off limits. I
often played in her flower garden, all alone, among the vibrant daylilies, the heavenly
smell of gardenias, towering hollyhocks, clematis, the dainty flowers of the crape myrtle
trees, and ah yes, the roses. Grandma loved her roses, especially her big fragrant orange
ones.
“I know Grandma, I know!” I yelled back towards the window.
I was only 7 years old at the time, standing in the midst of my grandmother’s flower
garden, looking through the chain linked fence, which separated her back yard from the
neighbors back yard. I remember trying to hide behind the tall hollyhocks and the purple
trailing clematis as I would stare intently through the fence at the mom and dad of a
crippled deaf boy in a wheelchair, as they signed back and forth, forming words with
their hands. I was mesmerized to say the least.
Trying to not make a sound, I would mimmick certains movements they did as they
spoke to him without any clamor from their lips. I wanted so badly to be able to speak to
that boy, who seemed to me, at my young age, to be about 16 or 17 years old. What kind
of world would that be like, to live each day without the sound of laughter, or to hear the
birds sing early in the morning before all the world was awake, or even to hear another
person’s voice spill out those three cherished words, I love you?
Sometimes, while standing there, hidden under the shade of the leaves, I would have such
a compassion and longing to communicate to him with my own hands, that tears would
well up in my eyes. I vowed to myself, right then, that when I got “big” I was
going to learn the language that formed words by gestures from the hands.
But on this day I felt brave. I was going to walk around that fence and enter into the deaf
boy’s world. I quietly stepped back away from the barrier, trying not to let his parents
hear me. As I turned to head towards the end of the fence and into his yard, I couldn’t
help but noticed the “forbidden” orange rose growing right there in my pathway. I
glanced toward the kitchen window, where Grandma stood to do her dishes, but she
wasn’t there. Should I? And before I gave it a second thought, my hand had broken off a
delicate bloom from the prized possession. I quickly hurried around the end of the fence
and walked right up to the deaf boy, who sat so still, and so sad looking in his wheelchair.
I took the orange rose that was hidden from behind my back and presented it to him
nervously and then smiled through an untamed curl that had fallen in front of one of my
eyes, from a head full of dark brown ringlets. He reached out to brush the stray curl from
my face and smiled at me, and in the next second that followed, I swiftly turned and
rushed back to Grandma’s side of the fence.
As I recall that day many years ago, I’m not sure why I ran. Was it because I was
embarrassed by the touch of a boy who could hold words in his hands or because I had
just committed the cardinal sin of picking the “forbidden” orange rose?
Years would pass and I would indeed go on to Bible college and learn the language of the
crippled deaf boy who stirred a passion in me to go beyond language barriers and
limitations of communication with the deaf. By forming words with my hands, I could
bring love, life, and a smile to the faces of those who may have never heard the sounds
like the ones I loved to hear in my grandma’s garden. Little did I know that my first
conversation from my hands, was clearly understood, the day I delivered the forbidden
orange rose to the deaf boy from my youth.