Flashback to Water Wings by Kristen den Hartog

Water Wings by Kristen den Hartog
Knopf Canada, 2001
240 pages

I love flowers! And I have a warm spot in my heart for the kind of novels I call “garden fiction” – books in which flowers enhance the beauty and meaning of a story. One of my favourite garden novels is Water Wings by Ontario writer Kristen den Hartog. It is the story of Hannah, a florist, and her sister Vivian, who return to their hometown for the mother’s wedding.  Den Hartog had recently abandoned her job as a magazine editor to work in a garden shop by day and write fiction by night. I travelled to the flower shop near Woodbine and Gerard in Toronto to ask her about the role of flowers in her novel. This piece which first appeared in the Montreal Gazette is a flashback to that sweet day.

When Kristen den Hartog was 25 years old she moved from Ottawa to Calgary. She was desperately in need of a change. She had been working as a copy editor for a magazine. But it had sapped her of the creativity she wished to put into the writing she did at night. Den Hartog wanted a day job that she might enjoy, but that would have nothing at all to do with writing. In Calgary, she came across an ad for a position in a flower shop: It read: "Experience not an asset." She took in her resume and landed the job.

As soon as she started working in the flower shop, floral imagery sprung up in her fiction: "My day job really began to inspire me. It sneaked into my writing. I took the florist position because I thought I could keep it separate from the writing, but they melded together. They became related in a way that I didn't expect."

Den Hartog's first novel, Water Wings, is the story of Hannah, a florist, and Vivian, her sister, who return to their hometown for their mother's wedding. The occasion calls up memories of their childhood, especially the demise of their parents' marriage and their father's sudden death. In Water Wings, den Hartog explores how flowers - natural life - influence memory and meaning.

Den Hartog, who now lives in Toronto, still works at a flower shop; this time on a wide street east of downtown. Many of the plants sold here are kept in the courtyard out back. I traipsed through on a spring afternoon and found hanging baskets of fuchsia and young clematis vines snaking their way up stakes. The heady sweetness of rock daphne wafted up from pots on the ground and bushy stalks of heather dangled their tiny white bells. Along one wall rolled wave after wave of Crayola-coloured pansies - salmon, vermilion, every unlikely hue. Den Hartog, who is petite and fair, with a striking resemblance to Meryl Streep, sat in the midst of this fluttering bouquet.

Kristen den Hartog

Unlike Hannah in Water Wings - whose father had been a silviculturist - den Hartog came late to a love of flowers. She grew up in the town of Deep River in the Ottawa Valley where her mother appreciated flowers but was not a true gardener. On the other hand, her grandfather, who immigrated from Holland as a middle-aged man, worked in a nursery. His Elmer, Ont., home boasted many unusual plants. He also indulged a passion for roses. "He had tons of rosebushes in his yard," den Hartog said. "Whenever we saw our Opa, roses were an important part of the visit."

More than her grandfather's roses, it is the flora of Deep River - its open fields of creeping colour, its textured bogs and woodlands - that surfaces in Water Wings. At one point, Hannah recalls her father Mick's funeral. She regrets "the deathly gladioli" that flanked his casket. "If Mick had only waited to die she would have made beautiful bouquets of reeds and wildflowers and weeping willow that spilled to the floor. It was easy to know what he would love."

Den Hartog holds fast to the notion that flower arranging, like any other art, ought to imitate nature. The Toronto shop, like the one in Calgary, has proven out of the ordinary: "We don't do teddy bear-and-balloon types of arrangements," den Hartog said. "We don't do flowers in bondage. Everything is really natural and beautiful, the way that flowers should be."

When I visited den Hartog's workplace, low steps skirting the storefront window showcased species more often associated with moors or meadows. There were flats of mauve-tinted heather alongside Goodwin Creek lavender, and grassy tufts of peppery-scented "leather- leaf" sedge. There was black-leaf clover and sunscape daisies with cushiony paint-splattered centres.

Den Hartog approaches her fiction the same way she approaches flower arranging: She is meticulous and works organically. "When I start a piece, I always write by hand in notebooks because I need to move around. I can't stay in my apartment and sit at the desk. Sometimes I go to a park and walk and look at things."

It was perhaps inevitable that den Hartog's fiction and flowers would come together, as she sees both as modes of communication. In Water Wings, Hannah's unmarried cousin Wren finds herself pregnant. Wren's mother uses flowers to convey acceptance: "She brought (Wren) a tray with a fancy cloth napkin and a vase with two large poppies that yawned open in the summer heat, exposing their black centres."

In Water Wings, flowers are more articulate than words. Hannah's sister Vivian displays great dexterity with language and yet is perpetually trapped in unintelligible rage. In contrast, "Hannah knows flowers." She possesses a profound understanding of the conflicting forces at work in nature - including human nature.

In the courtyard, den Hartog leaned over from where she sat in front of the pansies. She gently clasped a handful of heather and peered intently at its miniature bells. "There's so much more here than just a flower," she said. "It's about our whole world, about the way things grow, about shapes and textures, and the reasons behind them."

This piece appeared in the Montreal Gazette in 2001. In 2009 Kristen wrote a memoir called The Occupied Garden: A Family Memoir of War-Torn Holland with her sister Tracy Kasaboski.