Faking it for real

I love decorating my house with fresh flowers, buying them from the local florist and then meticulously putting them in glass vases filled with water, adding a pinch of salt to make sure they last longer and then placing them at various places across the house; roses and carnations for the living room and lilies for the bedrooms. My love for natural flowers is only beatable by my mother’s love for the fake ones. Her interest had begun when I’d taken her to a store that sold these fake flowers a few years ago, a decision that I would regret for the rest of my life. She had stood there amazed admiring the beauty of the fake roses, lilies, chrysanthemums, lotuses and hibiscus. She had told me that she had seen many fake flowers but none had been as close to the real ones. She touched them over and over again, sometimes even picking a few to smell them to confirm that they are only a replica. She spent over three hours in the store, picking up a bunch of the roses for the center table in the living room, as we left. Before I knew it, in a few weeks time, the house was filled with flowers bought from the same store. They were all over the house, to my horror, making their presence felt even in the bathroom. I would wince with disgust and request her to put them away. But by then it was too late, she had even inspired a few friends to do the same. Soon more flowers started to arrive as gifts or discount buys. I pointed out to my mother how the house looked like the Lal Bagh fake flower show exhibition had shifted its venue, but all that criticism was only falling to deaf ears.
It’s been a few years since all this happened, and I wish I could tell you that things have changed, that my mother finally grew tired of them and gave them away or a part of the house caught fire and they were all destroyed. But the truth is none of that happened, god did not heed to my prayers. However, I have changed; well not as drastically as liking the fake flowers, but my tolerance towards them has improved. Now I neither detest nor admire them. However, even now, once in a while I walk up to the local florist to buy a bunch of lilies that I place at the most visible part of the living room, admiring it from a distance, knowing that the others can only be substandard substitutes aspiring to match up to its beauty and elegance.