The Bloom is Off the Rose

The bloom is off the rose.  Have you ever used that expression?

It's an old idiom, I read, that dates back to the 19th century.  Roses were seen as a thing of beauty, perfection even.  But as everyone knows, they wither and fade.  Gradually, this fact was woven into our vernacular as an expression that means that something has lost its charm or attractiveness or luring qualities.

Bench seats in pickup trucks.  Your girlfriend could slide right next to you.  We would joke when we'd see someone sitting right next to the driver that they must be only carrying insurance on half the vehicle.  The center console and bucket seats made that romanticism disappear.  A high school boy was enamored with the fact that his girl could scoot over on the bench seat right next to him.  That just kind of withered away.  The thrill is gone.  The bloom is off the rose.

Right outside our back patio, my wife has some roses planted.  We enjoy watching their beauty.  You must take in that beauty quickly, however, because it's fleeting.  I have photographic evidence.  I tracked a rose from its hopeful beginning to its tragic end.  It takes all of six days or 144 hours for "the bloom to be off the rose."  

Let's look at exhibit A.  Here is a perfect boutonniere.  You could snip this off and stick it in the button hole on you navy blue blazer and you'd be dressed to the nines.  You'd be, as ZZ Top sang, "a sharp dressed man."

By that afternoon, the rose is just starting to open up...

And for a few days we beheld its beauty.  It fully opened and the delicate petals attracted all the attention on the back patio.  It was a show-stopper.  The talk of the town.

And yet, time keeps on ticking, and I guess, similar to our lives, its health and beauty begins to rapidly decline.  If you remember studying in school about the bell curve, or standard deviation curve, our beautiful rose is on the back side of that curve, and it's sliding down in an exponential fashion.  Those once gorgeous petals have dropped or are in the process of dropping.

And six days from the beginning of it's beauty, here we are.  The bloom is off the rose.

It reminds me of a song released in 1972 by Tanya Tucker called Delta Dawn.  It's a song about a woman, a Southern Belle, who was promised that a man was going to meet her and take her away to get married.  And he never came.  He stood her up.  The chorus goes like this:

Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on

Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?

And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today

To take you to his mansion in the sky?

She wears this faded rose - a symbol of hope and longing and good memories that went awry.  She's still waiting suitcase in hand for the man, and he'll never come.  The bloom is off the rose.  That would be a sad way to end this post, but there's a lesson in the frailty and disappointments of life:

Matthew 6:19-21  King James Version

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.