Sahra is vacuuming her home, surrounding the house with a huge noise. Soon, she hears the lock turning, and a cane comes into her sight – it’s her son coming back from school. Unlike usual, other than his backpack, he is also holding a flower pot in his hand with a flower in it.

“Hey son. How is school today?”

“Good.”

“Why are you holding a flower pot? Is it a special day today?”

“What?”

The sound of the vacuum runs over her voice. She gives up, and decides that she will find another time to find out about it.

The cleaning is done after a few hours. When she puts all the tools back into the storage room right next to her son’s room, she hears her son talking to someone.

It seems like his son had made a lot of friends at school in the past few weeks. Often, he would talk about his friends and things they did together at school with her passionately. With a proud smile climbing up her face, she puts her ear on the door, trying to hear more about the conversion.

“I hope it’s okay to keep you with me and share my troubles with you..” 

“Lately, I've been facing some difficulties … My friends do not fully understand me… It's frustrating and… I feel isolated.” She opens the door quietly, and takes a peek into the room. Adam is holding the flower pot in a relaxed way with his legs stretched out. To hide the fact that she is spying on her son, she still decides to leave the door quickly and keep all her questions to herself.

#

Sahra and her blind son Adam just moved into a new house in the welcoming neighborhood of Maplehood, trying to start a new life. In their previous experiences, it’s a bit difficult to fit into the community and make new friends because of Adam’s eyes. This time, she really hopes Adam will have a normal life and be able to adapt to the new environment. It seems like Adam is doing well in school since he keeps mentioning about his new friends quite often in the past few days. Sahra is very proud of that, because for her, it’s a sign that Adam is moving into a normal lifestyle, which makes her feel relieved slightly after all the worries she has had for Adam’s future.

However, as the flower steps into Adam’s life, Sahra detects some signs that things are getting off track. Not only that he stops talking about his school life, he doesn’t seem interested in his friends anymore. On weekends, he always stays in his room. Even when he is bored, he still locks himself in the room instead of trying to reach out to a friend. The decline of Adam’s social life worries Sahra, makes her panic, and she cannot focus even when she is watching her favourite show.

#

Sahra is standing in front of the window and is cleaning the dishes. Adam holds the flower with him and sits on the stairs in the yard, talking to the flower again. The flower doesn’t look as pretty as it was on the first day: the paddles all drop down, losing their bright hue; the stem slumps a bit forwards, having trouble standing straight; and the leaves lose their vividness, having their edges tinted yellow. Out of her worries and curiosity, she opens up the window and hopes to hear more.

“...My friends all love playing sports. I want to play with them, but I cannot help in the game at all” Adam murmurs to the flower.

Suddenly, a voice raises by the fence, “hey buddy, we are going to the park to play soccer. Do you wanna come along?” It’s his friends at school!

“Well, I have my flower that I need to take care of…”

“It’s alright, go with your friends! You will have a lot of fun.” While Adam is politely turning down his friends, Sahra yells from the window and accepts the invitation for Adam.

“Okay..” With an unwilling hesitation, Adam stands up, and reluctantly leaves his flower on the stairs.

As Adam walks out of the fence with the group, Sahra feels relieved, and returns to the sink with a smile. She quickly finishes all the dishes, and then makes herself a cup of coffee. Before she can pick up a book, the ticking sound made by the cane appears at the doorway.  His clothes are clean and neat without any muddy stains from the soccer pitch, and his hair hasn’t gone to a mess.

“Hey son, why are you back so quickly, it has only been fifteen minutes? Where are your friends?”

“Oh, I don’t feel like playing with them today. I want to be here with my flower”

“What, you prefer your flower over your human friends? How could you do this? Your friends are obviously more important than your flowers. What can the flower do for you? Your friends are being so nice asking you out with them, how could you just turn them down?” Sahra says furiously.

“They don’t understand me! Every time I play with them, they would unknowingly forget about my difficulties. The flower knows me better!” Adam feels offended and rushes back to his room.

“Your flower is wilting! You need to be with your real friends,” Sahra yells behind him.

#

One week later, Sahra enters the kitchen and starts to prepare breakfast for the family, thinking about the nightmare of getting rid of the rotten smell in his son’s room. How can I stop him from keeping that rotten flower? It’s going to stink soon! By that time, not only will there be bugs everywhere in the house, Adam will probably lose all his friends as well. With all these silent complaints and worries in her head, Sahra throws the bread into the toaster, expressing her unhappiness about Adam being obsessed with his “new friend”.

As the toaster rings and the butter melts on the golden toast, the clouds in front of the sun go away. Sahra looks out of the window, staring at the boy’s room, and notices that a strike of sunlight shuts into his room. Following the bright ray, she sees the withering flower again, which now has a nasty wet stem and is laying on the soil. In comparison to the flower, the weeds near the edge of the pot seem a lot more lively and pleasant. Sahara squeezes her eyebrows together and shakes her head. Suddenly, an arm blocks her sight, and reaches for the pot, as if it’s searching for something. It touches the weeds, gently goes over them, and finally, after a few struggles, reaches the flower. Unexpectedly, his fingers pinches the stem, digging into the soil, and pulling out the flower.

What did I just witness? Why was my son pulling out the flower? While Sahra is still in shock, Adam walks out of the room with messy hair and his treasured pot, casually says “Morning”, then throws the flower into the bin and waters the pot and sits down at the table as if nothing happened.

“The flower is rotting, I need to throw it away.” Adam slowly says.

After a little pause, Sahra walks to the table and places his breakfast in front of him. “Well, I’m glad you have finally realized that the flower cannot be your friend forever,” she says as she takes the seat next to him “It will wilt one day eventually. The flower cannot be with you for a long time, so it’s more important to play and talk to your real friend. You will need to have friends in order to have a decent life.”

“I understand that Mom, and I know why you are worried.” Adam says, turning his head away. “It’s just that I need someone to talk to. Even though my friends are important to me, they are not going to fully understand me. There are things that I cannot tell them about. I need someone to talk to, someone I trust.”

She pauses, and in that moment, Sahra seems to have realized something. In silence, all the moments where Adam talks to the flower about his unhappiness flashes in Sahra’s head. She wishes that she was there. She wishes that she was there for Adam the whole time. Sahra puts down the plates and hugs Adam tightly.

“Maybe I place too much expectation on you, and that makes me ignore the trouble you are facing. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize it earlier”

“Mom, it’s alright,” he says.

“You know you can always come to me, right?”

“Now I do.”

Sahra smiles, and eats her breakfast beside the boy and his weeds.