There’s a moment early in Mrs. Dalloway that has always stayed with me - Clarissa stepping out into the June morning to buy the flowers herself. It isn’t really about the flowers, of course. It’s about the errand. The stepping out, the choosing. The small, deliberate act of saying: this matters to me. The world rearranges itself around a handful of stems.
Lately, I’ve been feeling the pull of that scene more than ever. I’ve found myself slipping into the habit of buying fresh flowers, almost without meaning to - as though some soft part of my life has been asking for them long before I realized it.
Peonies, especially. There is something about their extravagance, their refusal to bloom politely. The way they arrive tight as fists and then unfurl into full, decadent softness, as if performing a slow-motion exhale. They are flowers that take up space unapologetically, flowers that remind you that beauty doesn’t have to be measured or modest. Sometimes it can be unabashed, excessive, a little dramatic.
And maybe that’s what I’ve needed. A bit of softness that isn’t afraid of itself. A quiet, lovely insistence on blooming anyway.
When I bring them home - wrapped in paper, petals brushing against my wrist like a secret - the apartment feels different: mornings are gentler and evenings settle more easily. They create a kind of interior weather, one that has nothing to do with the outside world: a pocket of calm, a miniature season of my own making.
I don’t think we talk enough about how small rituals anchor us. Not the big, life-defining ones, but the tiny, almost invisible gestures - the ones that signal care, attention, and desire. Buying fresh flowers has become that for me. A way of saying: I am here, paying attention to my own life. A reminder that I don’t need a reason to bring something beautiful into my home.
And perhaps that’s why Clarissa Dalloway resonates so much. She didn’t need an occasion. The party was an excuse; the flowers were the point. A moment of choosing beauty, of choosing herself.
So yes - fresh flowers, please. Not for the guests, not for the weeks when everything feels composed, but for the in-between days. For the pleasure of watching peonies remember what they were meant to become - and, a bit more poetically, for the reminder that I can do the same.
This is so beautiful💐
And by quoting you, I truly believe that “the tiny, almost invisible gestures” are what makes our life worthy.
As little reminder that we matter, that the magic of life is in the smallest gesture we do for ourselves✨💐