"I spent the early mornings thinking about which child I would have been most like, had I had a mother to walk me to school every morning. I imagined myself obedient instead of defiant, quick to smile instead of sullen. I wondered if I would still love flowers, if I would still crave solitude. Questions, unanswerable, swirled like water at the roots of my wild geraniums, which I soaked deeply and often."
When I first read this passage, I thought it was really powerful. Victoria, the main character, has been in and out of foster and group homes all her life, never having known her mother who gave her up when she was a newborn. At this point in the book she has just turned 18 twelve weeks before and has been kicked out of the group home where she was aged out for having no job and not being able to pay rent. She has no diploma, no family, and is now homeless.
She wonders what life would have been like if she'd grown up with a more typical family. Would she be the same person? Right now she is antisocial, withdrawn, easily angered, but she loves flowers. She learned to love them from one woman she stayed with when she was 10. The book hasn't said much yet about why she didn't stay with her and what happened to make her leave that home, but she seems to remember it with love.
It's unusual but she has a passion for gardening when she doesn't seem to care about anything else. She wonders if she would still love flowers if she were more normal. There's symbolism in the way she says that questions "swirled like water at the roots of the wild geraniums." She's wild like the flowers, soaking in questions about herself and no answers. It's a sad quote but beautiful too. For the first time in her life she's left alone but to find herself, not to just be the girl who can't find a home to stay or the girl no one wants.
