On the First Bromeliad of the Season and the Grandmother that Nurtured Them

The first bromeliad of the season is blooming—the first of many I will enjoy this year. The yard is filled with them, stuffed into planters and smattered around. Boxed in with the live oaks in the back. They are clustered all over due to their easy multiplication and heartiness. The first bromeliad I ever had was a gift from my grandmother when I bought my first house in Orlando. It sturdily lived in its pot for the entire 11 years I owned that home, even though I never bothered to repot it or plant it in the ground. It grew from two plants to five all crammed in the same unadorned plastic pot. I had intended to bring it back with me when I moved back to Tampa in 2021, but I sadly forgot it at the last second. Hopefully the new owner of my house has kept up with it.

Now I have dozens of bromeliads. I left my house in Orlando to move into my grandmother’s house, and every year, I tend to her bromeliads. I always look for the first one of the season, its light pink bracts and surprising symmetry never failing to catch my eye as I watch the colors deepen to a bright pink and tiny buds bring forth a garish purple as the bloom matures. There is something otherworldly about bromeliads—the way they rise from rosettes of foliage like tropical lanterns, self-contained, quietly radiant but prickly and alien. And every year, without fail, their flowers’ return calls someone else to mind—Mama Rose.

Mama died last July at the age of 98. The word “matriarch” gets thrown around often, but in her case it fit with full weight. She was our family’s axis: a formidable presence, sharp, bright, and hearty, much like her collection of bromeliads and other spiny sensations she tended to in her yard. She was a rare fruits aficionado, so I am now the keeper of some truly odd looking plants. Mama was blunt, with a wit that could both slice and soothe, sometimes at the same time, much to our collective chagrin. In many ways, she taught us what it meant to pay attention to the world around us—to people, to fairness, kindness, equity, tough love, and to the quiet strength of resilience.

And so my bromeliad flowers return, and with them, a melancholy I wasn’t expecting but should have been. A little ache rooted somewhere behind my ribs. Not just because she’s gone, but because something in the world is still growing without her in it. And I don’t just mean her flowers, but us, her family, persisting and thriving without her, like gift bromeliads let loose in the world.

It’s strange how certain plants carry memory like scent. The bromeliad wasn’t her favorite (that was definitely her pineapples, which every year had her grinning like a devil and yelling at me to pick them before the squirrels got to them), but it was one she let run wild over her property. She’d just say she liked it, liked how cheerful it was, how it grew and was no bother.

Standing in my garden now, looking at the flower peeking through its spiral of spiny leaves, I think about how memory can bloom the same way, suddenly and vividly, with color that deepens rather than fades. It’s not just about loss. It’s about continuity. She’s in the soil of my habits, the pattern of my speech, the way I arrange my life. Even the way I notice the world, like this moment with a flower she imprinted on me.

So I linger by the bromeliad a little longer than usual. I let myself miss her. And I whisper a quiet thank you for her strength, her stories, and the roots she left behind.