Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

Florida isn’t what a botanist would call exciting. The vibrancy and diversity of flora in Oregon are like being in a new world altogether. Emily is too young to know the difference, even when we do visit family in Florida. My wife says she misses her family. She misses her friends. I don’t.

We moved to Oregon when I lost my job and couldn’t find another. We were new parents. I was injured and the company didn’t like paying for the surgery. A lawsuit later I wound up with ten grand. My wife—whose name I won’t speak—was a stay-at-home mom that just finished school a year earlier and was having a hard time finding a position related to her degree. We’ll leave it at a medical technician degree. Her details aren’t important. She applied for a position at OSU, no expectations of actually landing it, but she did. Ten grand got us out here.

Now I’m a stay-at-home dad. Emily is two. We’re friends that play together. Fluffy seeds float through the air like snow, and the evergreens are as tall as the office buildings of Orlando. The grass is green-green.I didn’t know the grass I grew up looking at was hardly green. Emily has no idea about the reverse. We’re at a playground. Granola parents are letting their kids run around barefoot. I don’t do that. I do teach Emily to enjoy the purple wildflowers without destroying them. She plucks them up and pulls off the petals and stamen, then tosses the stem aside and moves on to the next.

“Here, daddy,” she says and pulls up a wildflower for me.

“You aren’t the boss of me!” I say dramatically, and she laughs while I pull the flower apart.