I’ve always had a very specific memory about my mother. As a child, I was brought quite often to the park outside our home, pushed there in a stroller or led there by the hand, stumbling over my little feet.
As with most parks in Singapore, this one was lined with distinct rows of Spider Lilies (Hymenocallis speciosa). Ma always relished the chance to point them out to me, herself somewhat marvelled by the humble beauty of these common flowers.
“Look at the Spider Lilies!” she would say, and I would spend a few minutes dazzled by their draping white petals, amazed at how wonderfully they smelled especially as the sun began to set.
I don’t believe Ma ever pointed any other flower out to me as enthusiastically as she did the Lilies.
A few weeks ago as I was looking through some old albums, I came across a few of my parents’ wedding photographs. And there they were again – the Lilies, but this time white Trumpet Lilies (Lilium longiflorum), beckoning from a cascading bouquet with white asters and wonderfully gaudy, two-toned carnations.
That was years before I was born, and yet I felt connected to my mother in that moment, by a thread strung through with Lilies.
LILY, our bouquet offering for Mother’s Day this year, takes from this special memory I have of Ma, and of the Lilies that still decorate the park outside our home.
Historically, these flowers have been around for a while, for at least a few thousand years.
It’s this same timelessness that I think characterises my bond with my mother, one that has been and will always be as graceful, majestic and fragrant as a Spider Lily at dusk.
Written by Tim