After haggling with 4 elderly ladies over flower prices, 2 of them ended up calling me back to give me free bouquets. One moment aggressively pushing flowers in my face, demanding money, and the next offering me gifts.Sunday September 14, 2008
Driving through Lupeni, if the streets are lined with flower vendors we know something’s up. We feel really good about ourselves if we happen to know what the city-wide celebration is, like for example September 8 we knew that it was the day to honor Mary’s, Jesus’ mother’s, birth, and to thus honor all subsequent Marys (which include all Marias and Marianas in Romania, amounting to about half the female population…a good day to be a flower vendor). But most of the time we drive through town feeling really stupid, that after 9 years of living here we still can’t get the holidays down. Like today. Yesterday was the Orthodox day of the Holy Cross, but that didn’t make sense of the flowers being sold all over town today. And at church no one had flowers. So I asked a vendor. “Don’t be upset with me, but which holiday are these flowers for?” The guy looked at me dumbfounded. “For tomorrow [duh].” “What’s tomorrow?” I cringed. Now he was clearly disgusted and trying to get away from me to sell some flowers to some ladies in the know. “School starts[double duh].” Right. I forgot that at school’s opening, parents arrive with flowers for their children’s teachers. This is very cynical, but isn't that a form, albeit a mild one, of corruption? Paying off teachers at term’s beginning? Maybe we're cynical because our very first year of living here an employee asked for his salary early so that he could “pay off” his son’s teacher in time for report cards – buying A's & B's for his D's & F's son. So when we see parents marching to school with fancy flowers in their arms twice a year, we kind of frown upon it. But is this any different than the apple of yore, placed on a teacher’s desk? Or is it any less sweet and innocent than the fabulous dollar store gems my sister used to accumulate at Christmas from her first graders? Anyway, I’m not really sure how to think about it now. But I think when we go to Briana’s new preschool tomorrow for the Opening Festival (we think we’ve found a place we can feel good about sending her 2-3 mornings a week) we will carry two bouquets of these gorgeous garden flowers, pictured. And if her teachers are pleased with our flowers, then we’ll feel good about bringing them. But if they register disappointment, or offense taken at us bringing mere garden flowers rather than the much more expensive and ghastly fluorescent-died, celophane-wrapped carnation arrangements, we’ll probably continue to frown upon these must-bring-ugly-and-expensive-flowers-to-your-teacher-days from here on out.
For us these matters are kind of an issue of timing. Giving an apple or a kitschy snow globe or flowers on the last day of the semester says, “Thank you for being such a good teacher to my child.” Offering gifts on the first day of the semester seems to say, “Please be as-good-as-my-gift-to-you-is to my child.” And then of course there is the matter of those whose scarce money would be better spent on a nutritious meal for their family then a gaudy bouquet, here today and gone tomorrow.
Driving through Lupeni, if the streets are lined with flower vendors we know something’s up. We feel really good about ourselves if we happen to know what the city-wide celebration is, like for example September 8 we knew that it was the day to honor Mary’s, Jesus’ mother’s, birth, and to thus honor all subsequent Marys (which include all Marias and Marianas in Romania, amounting to about half the female population…a good day to be a flower vendor). But most of the time we drive through town feeling really stupid, that after 9 years of living here we still can’t get the holidays down. Like today. Yesterday was the Orthodox day of the Holy Cross, but that didn’t make sense of the flowers being sold all over town today. And at church no one had flowers. So I asked a vendor. “Don’t be upset with me, but which holiday are these flowers for?” The guy looked at me dumbfounded. “For tomorrow [duh].” “What’s tomorrow?” I cringed. Now he was clearly disgusted and trying to get away from me to sell some flowers to some ladies in the know. “School starts[double duh].” Right. I forgot that at school’s opening, parents arrive with flowers for their children’s teachers. This is very cynical, but isn't that a form, albeit a mild one, of corruption? Paying off teachers at term’s beginning? Maybe we're cynical because our very first year of living here an employee asked for his salary early so that he could “pay off” his son’s teacher in time for report cards – buying A's & B's for his D's & F's son. So when we see parents marching to school with fancy flowers in their arms twice a year, we kind of frown upon it. But is this any different than the apple of yore, placed on a teacher’s desk? Or is it any less sweet and innocent than the fabulous dollar store gems my sister used to accumulate at Christmas from her first graders? Anyway, I’m not really sure how to think about it now. But I think when we go to Briana’s new preschool tomorrow for the Opening Festival (we think we’ve found a place we can feel good about sending her 2-3 mornings a week) we will carry two bouquets of these gorgeous garden flowers, pictured. And if her teachers are pleased with our flowers, then we’ll feel good about bringing them. But if they register disappointment, or offense taken at us bringing mere garden flowers rather than the much more expensive and ghastly fluorescent-died, celophane-wrapped carnation arrangements, we’ll probably continue to frown upon these must-bring-ugly-and-expensive-flowers-to-your-teacher-days from here on out.
For us these matters are kind of an issue of timing. Giving an apple or a kitschy snow globe or flowers on the last day of the semester says, “Thank you for being such a good teacher to my child.” Offering gifts on the first day of the semester seems to say, “Please be as-good-as-my-gift-to-you-is to my child.” And then of course there is the matter of those whose scarce money would be better spent on a nutritious meal for their family then a gaudy bouquet, here today and gone tomorrow.
1 comment:
You make a very valid argument, and raise an issue of "cultural competence" that I might bring up in class this week. :) What do you do when you recognize and acknowledge the cultural "norm" around you but generally disagree with its appropriateness? Hmmm..... Thanks for giving me something to think about today. Love you.
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