The FLower Girl with Opinions

Dearest Lala and Abbie,

When I was very young, Mamu and I felt a flutter of excitement every time Papu took us to visit the churches he was ministering to, all of us balanced on his motorcycle. It is strange to admit this now, because I am frightened of motorcycle rides these days especially after we came to live in Thailand. In Bangkok, motorcycles feel less like transportation and more like acts of faith. They slip between buses and cars as if the rules of gravity and mercy are temporarily suspended, and you cling on, hoping the ride will deliver you intact, whole, and still breathing.

But back then, when I was young, riding with Papu and Mamu was something I always looked forward to. Fear had not yet found me.

Papu drove us through long stretches of coconut groves, the trees standing like patient witnesses, their shadows flickering across the road. We crossed narrow water inlets where the air smelled green and alive. Sometimes we stopped at the homes of church members, where we were offered a glass of fresh coconut water, cool and sweet, handed to us with quiet hospitality.

Those rides were not fast, not reckless. They were steady, purposeful, filled with the promise of arrival.

One day, after a long ride, we arrived at a small church perched on top of a hill, overlooking the vast ocean, its surface kissed by the blue sky above. The church was modest, almost shy against such a grand view. As we stepped inside, a gathering was slowly forming, below a thin trail of people walking toward us at an unhurried pace, as if drawn by something gentle and inevitable. It was a wedding.

The cool ocean breeze drifted through the open windows, carrying with it a mood of ease and anticipation. Before I fully understood what was happening, I was ushered into a small room where little girls were already waiting, dressed in lace and flowered headbands. I was to be one of the flower girls.

I was thrilled. This would be my first time walking down an aisle, a small debut of sorts. I held a basket filled with freshly picked bougainvillea and roses, their petals soft and fragrant in my hands. Somewhere outside, an acoustic guitar began to play, its crisp, hopeful notes filling the air. The groom had arrived.

We were led to the middle of the aisle, instructed to wait, to be still, to prepare. I felt giddy with excitement, my heart beating too fast. Then the bride appeared.

She was young, luminous, dressed in white silk trimmed with pearls and lace. She looked impossibly beautiful, as if she belonged to the light itself. I saw her for one brief, overwhelming moment and then everything else blurred.

What happened next, I only know from what Mamu and Papu later told me. I began to cry. Not a quiet, dignified cry, but the kind that refuses comfort, that spills over and takes up space. I cried so hard, they said, that I nearly ruined the wedding. 

“The bride is so beautiful,” I wailed, my voice rising above the music and the murmurs, “but the groom is very old.”

The words fell into the church like dropped plates. Sharp. Unrecoverable. Adults froze, their faces caught between horror and the urge to laugh. Someone tried to hush me, another to lift me away, but the truth as I saw it had already announced itself. I cried harder then, not out of mischief, but out of a child’s pure confusion, stunned by an unfairness I did not yet know how to soften with manners.

Later, Mamu would retell the story with careful pauses, and Papu would laugh until his eyes watered. 

That was the day I almost ruined a wedding. I did not know then how love works, with all its mysteries and ironies, how it refuses to follow the logic we are taught to trust. The ceremony went on after I was gently carried away, soothed out of my confusion, my protest quieted by Mamu’s hands and murmured reassurances.

What remains with me is not the ending, but the setting: the ocean stretching wide and patient, the small church holding its place against the wind. I never knew how that marriage truly began, or how it later unfolded, whether it bent or endured. But now, when I think back, I choose to believe something gentler. I imagine that behind the veil I once saw a bride glowing with pride, held by a love I could not yet understand a love that stood firm and faithful,  a love that did not cease to endure, even under the threat of storms, a love tested by wind and weather, yet steady, returning again and again to its promise, the way the sea always finds the sky, even as the waves raged between them.