Paper Roses and Real Flowers
One evening, when my eyes still permitted me to drive, a feeling of unease settled over me—like a cloud dimming the sunlight. When I lay down in bed, I turned the discomfort over in my mind until its source came clear. A question surfaced:
“Why do I give rides to hitchhikers?”
My family and most of my friends would never stop for strangers. Neither, in truth, does the public in general. Each time I’ve offered someone a ride, they’ve told me they’d been waiting for hours. Yet I don’t feel noble about it, nor do I recommend it. I never boast about my “bravery,” and I hardly speak of it at all. On the rare occasions I’ve shared this habit, I’ve only been met with warnings.
So why do I persist? I asked the question drowsily to my pillow as I drifted into sleep.
By 3:30 a.m., the answer arrived—crystal clear.
When I was young, my family didn’t have the means to send me to the United States to study—not even enough for a one-way ticket. Still, I was determined. My plan was to hitchhike all the way there.
“How will you cross the ocean?” friends asked, half-concerned, half-amused.
“Have you not heard of walking on water?” I’d reply, deflecting the question, unwilling to share the secret I carried.
I began preparing for the journey. I walked ten miles each day and limited myself to one meal, building stamina for the road ahead. I studied palmistry and practiced magic tricks, imagining they might earn me kindness—or at least a meal—from those who offered me rides. I taught myself to shape blood-red crepe paper into roses, so that I might leave behind small tokens of thanks for strangers who shared food, shelter, or a seat in their car.
None of that was needed. Instead, I encountered another kind of magic—real magic, not illusion.
At twenty-two, I found myself not trudging along roads or waiting endlessly by highways, but flying—literally flying—across continents and oceans. The four years I had imagined for this journey compressed into a single day. Within twenty-four hours, I was on the other side of the world.
And instead of standing by the roadside waiting for hours, I was suddenly the one driving a car.
So now, when I see a hitchhiker waiting, I see myself. I remember the people I once imagined into being—the ones who would pick me up, share their food, and even carry me across the sea. It was not a childish fantasy. I truly expected it to happen.
And in a way, it did.
When I stop for a hitchhiker, I am stepping into the role that someone once held in my imagination. We meet, across time and circumstance, on the same road.
By experience, I know that ninety-nine percent of hitchhikers are safe. I’ve also met the one percent—the hair-raising encounters that made my heart pound. Yet that risk has never stopped me. After all, I’ve had equally frightening moments driving on highways—or even crossing a street.
Almost every hitchhiker has taught me something. They are my paper roses—tokens of gratitude, each leaving behind a trace of color. For this, I am deeply thankful.
But the one percent have taught me something even more important: that life itself is not made of red crepe-paper flowers. Real flowers are fragile, tender, and fleeting. They remind us to pause, to breathe in their fragrance, to be present—because they vanish before our eyes.
Some of the following stories may sound a little strange—but that only shows how wonderfully surprising life can be. Truth, at times, wears the costume of fiction. Yet I promise you, every moment here unfolded just as I have told it. No embellishment, no invention—only life, in its honest colors.
Now, at age 90, I find joy in sharing these memories with dear friends who have traveled parts of this road beside me. If, in these pages, you find a smile, a spark of wonder, or a touch of your own heart reflected back—then I know the flowers I’ve shared along the way have truly taken root and bloomed.
Other
Hitchhiker
Stories:
The Richest People
in the World
Treva, the Turnpike,
and Two Strangers
Why Was I
Blind to Your Fear
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