Defense

The rose defends itself before it blooms. The thorns come first — hard, hooked, pointing down, designed not to stab but to hold. To grip the skin of anything climbing up and say not yet. Wait. Botanists call them prickles, not thorns. A thorn is modified stem. A prickle is modified skin. The rose has prickles. I have been told this at a dinner party by a man who was right and insufferable in equal measure. Regardless. They work. The deer don't eat the roses. The rabbits go around. Even the aphids, who fear nothing and have no respect for anything with roots, hesitate on the stems. My mother grew roses in a garden where nothing else survived. Acid soil, north-facing, clay that held water like a grudge. The roses didn't care. They sent their roots down through the clay and came up thorned and flowering and my mother was proud of them the way you're proud of children who succeed in spite of every disadvantage you accidentally gave them. She never wore gloves. Her hands showed it. Small scratches, always healing, always new. She said the pain was part of it — that you couldn't have the flower without the thorn and you couldn't have the thorn without the willingness to be touched by something sharp. I grow roses now. Same soil. Same clay. Same stubborn plants making beauty out of difficulty. I wear gloves. My mother would disapprove but she's not here to say so, which is its own kind of thorn — the one you carry that doesn't show.