When Michael and I were in Hawaii a month ago, we spent an afternoon wandering through downtown Hilo. We came upon a thrift store and decided to go in and look at the racks of old Hawaiian shirts we could see from the window. We leafed through the shirt like the pages of a giant botanical book, leafed through anthuriums and orchids, through hibiscus and palm fronds. We leafed through color after color; yet, were strangely uninspired.

I decided to take a quick look through the books as we exited, just in case. And there it was, a large coffee table book devoted to tulips.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.  My head still swimming with orchids, anthuriums, et cie.

It was a volume I didn’t think I had, but in the moment was unsure. It wasn’t the best tulip book I’d ever seen. Mostly showy portraits of individual tulips or Dutch fields roaring with color. In many ways it was not unlike the shirts we just fondled and declined. It was only $5 and slim enough to fit into my collection back home between ‘TULIPA” by Christopher Baker and “TULIPS” by Peter Arnold.

But even at the price it seemed the wrong thing to bring back from our trip to paradise. So I passed on that rare find as out of place as blond-haired blue-eyed me on this South Pacific Isle.

Still the book came with me. Not as object. I wondered whether some mainlander who moved to paradise packed it along. Or had a wandering Hawaiian dragged it back from a spring visit to Holland or the Skagit Valley? Obviously it had become as useless as those Hawaiian shirts. I wondered, if I moved there, to Hawaii, would I bring my tulip books with. Would I miss tulips? Or forget about them.

Had the person who brought this book here, maybe all the way from Vermont, half a world away, became numb to the homesickness, the longing for winter and then spring. And with spring, tulips. Maybe other colorful flowers over the years seeped into their psyche and replaced the deep and familial feeling that tulips always gave.

Maybe it belonged to a Hawaiian so tired of the repetitious beauty of anthuriums, orchids, and palms, that the tulip had a great fascination for them. Like some northerners adore orchids, or anthuriums.

Michael and I entertain the idea of moving to the 50^th State, paradise, the Big Island. Would I pack my tulips library? It would be useless there, where flowers bloom everywhere all year, where a book of flower pictures in January is really not necessary. Where I could not grow tulips.

But Could I let my collection of tulip books sit in a mainland storage locker for 2 years, 5 years, 20 years, while I grew tan and old under a coconut palm? Could I abandon my passion for the genus? Replace it with another, like anthuriums?

Not orchids—way to many orchids.

Suddenly this love I feel for tulips, this tulipomania, feels crazy.  Just a flower among flowers, and even more flowers covering this planet.

Still I can’t take my eyes off of them, so more tulip posts to follow.