{"id":2083,"date":"2024-06-18T10:44:03","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T10:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2083"},"modified":"2024-06-18T10:44:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T10:44:05","slug":"day-of-the-asters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/day-of-the-asters\/2083\/","title":{"rendered":"Day of the Asters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I sense their presence before I open the door, despite their lack of scent. What\u2019s the point of flowers without a scent? Just as I feared, I enter my kitchen to find it full of them. Asters. I hate the things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They spill from vases and peer out of pots on the table, the floor, the windowsill. Some appear to be growing directly from the ceiling, strangling the light fittings and creeping down the walls. It\u2019s a floral nightmare. Where have they come from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

When I was six years old, Mum told me that an aster had saved my life when she was pregnant with me. She\u2019d touched a flower and its pink petals had gently grasped her finger like a baby\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s when I decided to keep you,\u201d she smiled wistfully, as though this was a heart-warming story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My breath caught in my throat and I dropped the paintbrush I was holding, splattering red paint all over the happy picture of our family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her words have echoed in my ears my whole life. It didn\u2019t help that she planted asters everywhere. She probably thought it was a cute symbol of her maternal love, but it meant the exact opposite to me. The part of the story that I\u2019d tuned into was the fact that she had been considering not<\/em> keeping me. That it was only because of some flower that she\u2019d changed her mind. And what if she\u2019d read the aster\u2019s signal all wrong? What if it\u2019d been trying to tell her to get rid of me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asters weren\u2019t the only things Mum was obsessed with. She also had a morbid fascination with death. More specifically, recent deaths of people we knew. It was her favourite topic of conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOld Mrs Wainwright\u201d or \u201cDoris from number 25\u201d or \u201cMoira James\u2019s husband\u201d had \u201cdropped dead in the post office\u201d or \u201cin their sleep\u201d or \u201cin a tragic accident, God rest their soul,\u201d she\u2019d say, before pointing out the ways in which it\u2019d been inevitable. She\u2019d always had a \u201cdodgy heart.\u201d Or it was \u201cthat stressful job he had, so it was,\u201d or, \u201cWhat did he expect, smoking thirty Superkings a day?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death and asters and my mother\u2019s love were inextricably intertwined in ways I could never quite understand. My life felt like a Final Destination movie. I had cheated Death, and now it was chasing me down, seeking reparation. Except Death took the physical form of tiny, beady-eyed flowers that glared at me wherever I went, and hissed under their breath in my Mum\u2019s voice, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t be here!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As soon as I had my own house, I banished asters. So why are they all over my kitchen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then behind me, a voice. That unmistakeable Irish lilt. Mum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll never guess who\u2019s dead,\u201d she says, and my blood runs cold. Mum died ten years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho?\u201d I say, my body trembling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can barely hear her over the wailing of the Banshee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The asters dance for joy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Her words have echoed in my ears my whole life. It didn\u2019t help that she planted asters everywhere. She probably thought it was a cute symbol of her maternal love, but it meant the exact opposite to me. The part of the story that I\u2019d tuned into was the fact that she had been considering not keeping me. That it was only because of some flower that she\u2019d changed her mind. And what if she\u2019d read the aster\u2019s signal all wrong? What if it\u2019d been trying to tell her to get rid of me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1129,1305],"tags":[1312,773,95,7,13,12,128,342,14,687,118,127,11,159,172],"class_list":["post-2083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1129","category-june-2024-retribution","tag-asters","tag-before","tag-had","tag-her","tag-me","tag-my","tag-out","tag-scent","tag-she","tag-their","tag-they","tag-things","tag-was","tag-what","tag-when"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-xB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}