Flower Dance

My aunt, 90, comes home from the hospital in two days. She has been there almost two months, mostly waiting for her 24-hour home care arrangements to be approved. My mother, 86, says,"Wouldn't it be nice if she had fresh flowers to come home to?" My aunt really could not care less about fresh flowers, and I know they will sit in her living room until they are withered to ash unless I or someone else comes by and throws them away. But it will make my mother happy to know there are flowers in her big sister's home on the day she comes home from the hospital, so it is up to me to fulfill my mother's not-so-idly-stated wish. I'm thinking tulips, artfully arranged. "Go to the corner," my husband says. "Just grab a bunch there." "Do they have tulips?" I ask, to which he just shrugs. Simplify.